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FEATURES (Published Date :3/5/2012)

ISLAMIC FUNDS

Plenty of room for growth and product innovation
By Paul Mackintosh
Category :Malaysia,Middle East,Southeast Asia
The expanding shariah-compliant investment fund universe has been attracting more and more fans from outside the Islamic world, as their overall volume of capital under management grows and attention shifts to alternative products and asset types not implicated in the post-2008 crisis.

PROFILE

Perseverance pays off for Cohen & Steers
Category :U.S.A.
The world of real estate investment trusts (REITs) has seen dramatic change and growth ever since the first REIT was launched in the United States in 1960. More than 50 years on, REIT structures have spread across the globe to Europe and more recently to Asia. Singapore saw its first REIT in 2002 and Hong Kong a year later.

PRIVATE EQUITY PANORAMA

China may open capital accounts by 2015
By Paul Mackintosh
Category :China
The People’s Bank of China has just signalled an initiative that many private equity professionals have long been waiting for: the liberalisation of China’s capital controls.
China’s PE funds may not be quite what they seem to be
By Paul Mackintosh
Category :China
With the Obama administration now also turning its fire on carried interest, time to shift attention elsewhere: to China. For while US GPs (general partners) face the prospect of fresh curbs on their industry, the PRC is busy hatching fund vehicles the likes of which Asia has never seen.

GREATER CHINA

Patience is a virtue
By Hui Ching-hoo
Category :China
Plans to allow retirement schemes to invest in the local equity market are on track according to China’s Human Resources and Social Security Vice Minister Hu Xiaoyi. However, the effective date of implementation of the programme has yet to be finalised.

RISK MANAGEMENT

Reading into the risks
By Joëlle Miffre*
Category :Global
Attracted by the prospect of robust returns, diversification benefits, and potential for hedging inflation and macroeconomic risks, investors have increased their allocations to commodities over the last ten years, primarily via passive investment into long-only commodity futures indices.
QFC steps up development of the asset management industry
Category :Middle East,Qatar
With the swift development of Qatar’s capital markets, there is a growing breadth and depth of investible assets supporting the development of the asset management industry.

FOCUS

Building on strong foundations for Asian expansion
By Hui Ching-hoo
Category :Asia,China
The fallout from the European sovereign debt crisis made a dent in the portfolios of Nikko Asset Management Asia Limited (Nikko AM Asia) in 2011, but the firm has been getting its business back on track with the stimulus of the thriving Asian economies, according to Ng Soo Nam, the company’s chief investment officer.

QUANTITATIVE INVESTING

Managers with strong long-run track record always in demand
By Hui Ching-hoo
Category :Asia-Pacific
Quantitative investing has increasingly become a hot topic in recent years. Quant managers’ performance lagged way behind traditional managers in 2008 and 2009. Market interventions in the US and Europe for the last two years also significantly affected the fundamentals-driven quant fund managers. This underperformance has led the markets to question the funds’ effectiveness.

KOREA

Petra goes against the grain
By Hank Morris
Category :Korea
Petra Capital Management is one of the leading Korean investment advisory companies, a category active in the domestic asset management market that is not well known outside of the country – however, it is beginning to have a major impact upon the asset management industry.

HEDGE FUNDS

Korea finally opens up to hedge funds
By Hank Morris
Category :Korea
Following the Korean Financial Supervisory Commission’s announcement in December last year that the regulations for governing the operations of domestic hedge funds in Korea would be loosened up, 12 domestic hedge funds have been registered, according to the Korea Capital Markets Institute (KCMI).

CEO INTERVIEW

Eastspring encompasses Prudential’s Asian heritage
By Hui Ching-hoo
Category :Asia
Eastspring Investments is the new brand name for Prudential Corporation Asia’s asset management business. Asia Asset Management talks to Chief Executive Graham Mason and Guy Strapp, the firm’s deputy chief executive, to find out their perspectives on how the rebranding exercise will benefit the firm’s business growth and its product strategies.

COMMENTARY

Burmese days, the brighter ones
By V G Kulkarni
Category :Myanmar
Gautama, the Buddha, after gaining enlightenment more than two millennia ago preached: “In life change is permanent”. Over the past 60 years, in Myanmar (or Burma) where most people follow the religion named after him, they must have wondered why life had become totally stagnant with little prospect of progress.

PENSIONS

Governing the governors: Pension funds governance
By Paul Mackintosh
Category :Global
Pension funds, the US$20 trillion+ behemoths of asset management, are arguably in charge of the largest single category of financial assets in the world. Yet their internal governance is often a matter of unique local political, legal, and corporate considerations that may make it difficult to impossible to apply consistent standards of governance across all such institutions.

MARKETWATCH

The biggest shock for 2012 will be no shocks
By David Macfarlane
Category :Asia
In this edition of Marketwatch, Bill Maldonado, CIO of Asia-Pacific, HSBC Global Asset Management; Tim Haywood, investment director for GAM for long only and absolute return fixed income; and T. Rowe Price International Ltd’s president for international fixed income, Ian Kelson, along with Chris Alderson, the firm’s president for international equity, give their thoughts and opinions on where the various markets are headed.

SEARCH DIRECTORY

Directory of Manager Appointments & Searches March 2012
Directory of Manager Appointments & Searches March 2012

MARCH 2012 E-MAGAZINE

MARCH 2012 E-MAG
Category :Asia,China,Asia-Pacific
Click to view the electronic version of Asia Asset Management's March 2012 issue.
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