Buy side Archive

Society’s spotlight is shining increasingly brightly across countries and industries worldwide. While corporates globally are becoming ever more aware of their social responsibilities, the driving forces behind this shift vary by country, highlighting the need for a localized approach to company engagement. In the US, for example, politics, labor shortages and consumer sentiment seem to be giving this once-fringe practice greater prominence. In other markets, regu...

The UK’s biggest fund manager is ramping up the pressure on big companies that lack board independence, highlighting Japan and the Asia-Pacific region as the biggest culprits. Legal & General Investment Management (LGIM), which manages around £1 tn ($1.3 tn) worth of assets, voted against 3,864 company directors globally last year – a 37 percent increase on 2017 – following its strengthened voting policies. It notes that the issue of board independ...

Despite a turbulent 2018, noticeable for poor performance, institutional investors are boosting their allocation to hedge funds, driven by a search for alpha generation and diversification, a JPMorgan Chase institutional investor survey finds. An examination of these investor priorities geographically shows alpha generation to be the primary reason for investors in EMEA (58 percent) and Asia-Pacific (57 percent), while fewer consider it as important in the Americas ...

At this stage in the story of Saudi Arabia’s equity market emergence, two of the world’s three most important index providers – FTSE Russell and S&P Dow Jones – have included the country in their emerging market (EM) indices. By the end of 2019, the country is hoping that its newly gained status will attract $20 bn of foreign investment, supporting ...