Buy side Archive

The 2020 proxy season has been unusual for many reasons, not least because hundreds of companies have switched to virtual AGMs as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. Now, preliminary data suggests there has been a reversion against a trend noted by investors and governance professionals in recent years: what had been a growing number of shareholder proposals withdrawn as a result of successful negotiations with companies. According to Georgeson, roughly 62 percent of...

Companies should be prepared for higher volatility and trading volumes over the next two weeks as a series of key indexes rebalance and adjust constituents, say market experts. The changes will be more significant than normal, they add, given the big valuation shifts brought about by Covid-19. ‘Traditionally, reconstitutions and rebalances are important,’ says Dan Romito, associate vice president of IR product strategy at Nasdaq. ‘In terms of gravity and impac...

The discipline of emerging markets investing – choosing investible targets in economies transitioning between developing and developed status – emerged in the 1980s after then World Bank economist Antoine van Agtmael coined the term. Since then, it has become a widespread investment practice as investors and asset managers seek to generate alpha from the opportunities of economic development, rising wealth and boosted consumption in such countries. For investors...

Sponsored content During the first quarter of 2020, as the reality of the Covid-19 pandemic dawned on investors, outflows in the technology sector spiked significantly, compared to all other sectors. The healthcare sector was the only industry to experience inflows, unsurprisingly, but the technology sector saw outflows of more than $25 billion – more than any other sector in the S&P500 – according to analysis of sector fund flows for the fir...