EDHEC-Risk - EDHEC-Risk in the Press

EDHEC-Risk in the Press

EDHEC-Risk Institute has been cited widely in the business and industry press. A selection of articles may be found below.

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February 2012

Financial Times (03/02/2012)
War of words mars year of contrasting fortunes
"(...) BlackRock was also accused last month by EDHEC Risk Institute, part of EDHEC business school, of “doubletalk” and “Orwellian doublethink” in showing different attitudes regarding the use of derivatives to US and European regulators. In a report, EDHEC quoted a letter from BlackRock to the US Securities and Exchange Commission in which the group backs the naming of funds based on their economic exposure. The position, says EDHEC, clashes with BlackRock’s response to European regulators in which the firm demands a clear distinction between physical and synthetic ETFs. (...)"
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Ignites Europe (02/02/2012)
BlackRock wants more from draft ETF rules
"(...) The latest comments from BlackRock come after it was criticised earlier this month by EDHEC of “doubletalk” and “Orwellian doublethink” in showing different attitudes regarding the use of derivatives in response to US and European regulators. In a report, EDHEC quoted a letter from BlackRock to the US Securities and Exchange Commission in which the group backs the naming of funds based on their economic exposure. The position, says EDHEC, clashes with BlackRock’s response to European regulators, in which the firm demands a clear distinction between physical and synthetic ETFs. EDHEC academics said in the report that ETF marketing campaigns promoting distinctions between physical and synthetic ETFs are “misleading”, adding it makes “little sense” to categorise these products according to whether they invest in derivatives or not. The EDHEC-Risk Institute claims these distinctions are not relevant in practice and lead investors to believe that physical ETFs are comparatively safe products. (...)"
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Risk.net (01/02/2012)
Esma aims for the middle ground with draft ETF guidelines
"(...) The broadened focus of the new Esma consultation "approaches important issues in a horizontal way across all Ucits rather than in a vertical way limited to Ucits ETFs," states the EDHEC-Risk Institute in its formal response to Esma's latest recommendations. "The regulator has avoided the error of recommending the application of identifiers that would have created artificial and misleading distinctions between funds on the basis of the tools or techniques they use, including to replicate indexes," states the institute. "Continued adherence to a silo approach would have increased the risks of adverse selection by investors and regulatory arbitrage by issuers." (...)"
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Asia Asset Management (February 2012)
The true risks of ETFs
Article by Frédéric Ducoulombier, director of EDHEC Risk Institute–Asia
"(...) In the light of issues raised by financial regulators and international organisations, new research at EDHEC-Risk Institute has addressed the question of the risks of UCITS Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFs). In our view, any discussion of the risks inherent in ETFs should go beyond merely hypothesising about potential risks, and should also take into account the empirical evidence provided by the existing academic research on ETFs, which has documented various benefits in terms of liquidity and price efficiency. (...)"
Copyright Asia Asset Management [www.asiaasset.com]
Hedge Funds Review (February 2012)
Case for long/short commodity indexes
Article by Joëlle Miffre, professor of finance at EDHEC Business School
"(...) Joëlle Miffre explains how EDHEC has constructed a long/short commodity strategy capturing the risk premium in commodity futures markets and that can be used to design a third-generation commodity index. (...) There are many reasons why commodity indexes are useful tools for strategic asset allocation. First, their risk-return trade-off has been shown to be comparable to that of equity indexes (Erb and Harvey, 2006; Gordon and Rouwenhorst, 2006). Second, they have low return correlation with traditional asset classes and so are useful tools for risk diversification (Erb and Harvey, 2006; Gordon and Rouwenhorst, 2006). Third, unlike stocks and bonds, commodity prices rise in inflationary periods, making commodity indexes natural hedges against inflation (Bodie and Rosansky, 1980; Bodie, 1983). Fourth, unlike commodity trading advisers (CTAs), commodity indexes are completely transparent, cheap to trade and liquid (at least when nearby contracts are traded). (...)"
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January 2012

Financial News (31/01/2012)
Esma ETF rules bring mixed response
"(...) Business school and think tank EDHEC said the consultation paper was "inline" with EDHEC's own position that both physical and synthetic ETFs can be subject to counterparty risk, and was in "total agreement" with Esma regarding the risks associated with securities lending. In a statement, Edhec said: "Esma recognises that securities lending allows a fund to take more unmitigated counterparty risk exposure than OTC derivatives and that it is subject to fewer constraints in the area of risk management; it notably does not benefit from European guidelines on collateralisation of the type mandated for the management of counterparty risk arising from the use of OTC derivatives." (...)"
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FTfm (30/01/2012)
Mr Romney and the equity privateers
"(...) In another survey covering 7,500 investments over 40 years, economists at EDHEC-Risk Institute have found that a large proportion of high-return deals are indeed quick flips – investments held for less than two years. This frenetic activity resulted in far too many companies being left with overstretched balance sheets. Their vulnerability has been cruelly exposed since 2008. (...)"
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Hedge Funds Review (27/01/2012)
Solvency II directive could end hedge fund investment by European insurance companies
"(...) Proposed European Union Solvency II capital requirements could mean insurance companies might not be able to invest in hedge funds. At present the draft directive allocates a 49% capital requirement for investment into hedge funds. New research, however, argues the weighting does not reflect the real risks inherent in hedge fund strategies. Instead a capital charge of no more than 25% is more appropriate for a diversified hedge fund allocation, concludes a research paper* by Mathieu Vaissié, a senior portfolio manager at Lyxor Asset Management. (...)"
*Solvency II: a unique opportunity for hedge fund strategies, January 2012. Mathieu Vaissié, research associate at EDHEC-Risk Institute and a senior portfolio manager at Lyxor Asset Management.
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Hedge Funds Review (27/01/2012)
Hedge fund investors warned of pitfalls of share class restrictions
"(...) Share class restrictions in the hedge fund industry may have unintended consequences, disadvantaging some investors who are not aware of future fund flows, concludes research by Ronnie Sadka of Boston College’s Carroll School of Management in the US and Gideon Ozik of the EDHEC Business School. Managers and significant investors who know in advance about money exiting a fund because of the advanced notice required in a restricted share class fund could take advantage of that knowledge. This may disadvantage shareholders remaining in the fund who are not aware of the outflows in advance, say Sadka and Ozik. Their findings* were presented at a research conference in Paris sponsored by Lyxor and NYSE Euronext. (...)"
*Skin in the Game versus Skimming the Game: Governance, Share Restrictions, and Insider Flows by Gideon Ozik, EDHEC Business School, and Ronnie Sadka, Boston College, Carroll School of Management.
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Ignites Europe (26/01/2012)
Industry looks on the bright side of Esma clampdown
"(...) The comments come after a recent paper issued by EDHEC, which suggested European regulators should avoid making artificial distinctions between physical and synthetic. With physical providers extolling the virtues of their products in the wake of concerns, EDHEC says there is “no reason to attach stigma” to the use of swaps by regulated funds. All European ETFs, says EDHEC, are managed within the Ucits framework and as such have the same levels of security and the same risks as any Ucits fund. The views from EDHEC appear to have split opinion, with 49 per cent of respondents to an Ignites Europe poll saying attaching ‘synthetic’ or ‘physical’ labels to ETFs should be avoided. Commenting on the EDHEC paper, SSgA’s Ms Hope-Bell says: “At SPDR ETFs, we have always maintained that Ucits ETFs are well-regulated funds. (...)"
Copyright Ignites Europe (a Financial Times service) [Full text - Registration required]
Index Universe (26/01/2012)
Less Risk, More Return?
"(...) However, Felix Goltz, head of applied research at France’s EDHEC-Risk institute, has downplayed the low-volatility anomaly. The widespread use of capitalisation-weighted benchmarks may indeed increase the likelihood of short-term reversals in return from high-momentum stocks, Goltz concedes, but the apparent outperformance of low-volatility stocks may be reduced if you look at it on a different timeframe, for example by conducting risk measurements every two years rather than every month. And, given that volatility is only one measure of risk (and a rather crude one, since it doesn’t tell us about the likelihood of extreme movements), the positive “skewness” of many volatile stocks’ returns may be missed by those talking of a low volatility effect, says Goltz. In other words, investors may gain from an additional, option-like payoff when owning high-performing stocks like Apple or Google, while this inbuilt “optionality” is not measured by standard risk measures, like those for volatility or beta. (...)"
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IPE (26/01/2012)
Hedge fund performance for 2011 almost as bad as 2008 – EDHEC-Risk
"(…) The broad hedge fund industry had a very poor year in 2011, according to figures just in from the EDHEC-Risk Institute. Only one of the five strategy groups that it tracks recorded positive performance over the year: equity market neutral, which managed to finish up 0.88%. That comes over 12 months in which the S&P 500 returned 2.11%, thanks to a late spurt in December, while bonds, in the form of the Lehman Global index, finished up almost 10%. The most popular hedge fund strategy, long/short equity, was also the worst performer, according to EDHEC-Risk. It finished the year down 5.97% – underperforming US equities by more than 8 percentage points. (…)"
Copyright IPE [Full text - Registration required]
Hedge Funds Review (January 2012)
Positive results for long/short
Article by Joëlle Miffre, professor of finance at EDHEC Business School
"(...) The increased participation of financial investors in commodity markets has also led to concerns about their possible increased integration with traditional financial markets, which could have resulted in the weakening of the diversification benefits from commodity investments. Recent research by EDHEC-Risk Institute with the support of CME Group has shed new academic evidence on these concerns with particular emphasis on long/short commodities futures investing. The first contribution is a study of the performance and risk characteristics of long-only commodity portfolios and of long/short commodity strategies implemented by managers with a focus on commodities, such as commodity trading advisers (CTAs) and commodity pool operators (CPOs). The research investigates the conditional volatility of commodity futures investments and their conditional correlations with traditional assets. (...)"
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FT Adviser (25/01/2012)
Forget ETFs, index funds are best, says Terry Smith
"(...) Last week Financial Adviser reported on a 70-page academic paper, published by the EDHEC-Risk Institute, which pointed out there was a significant lack of understanding, transparency and disclosure regarding ETF investment. The report called for regulators to ensure there was greater disclosure on the risks associated with ETFs so that investors could perform due diligence. (...)"
Copyright FT Investment Adviser [Full text]
Securities Lending Times (25/01/2012)
Solvency II an opportunity for hedge funds?
"(...) Solvency II could be a unique opportunity for hedge fund strategies to find their way into insurers’ core portfolios according to recent research from EDHEC Risk Institute. Upon implementation of the regulation, insurance firms will have to maintain underlying capital equivalent to 49 per cent of their total hedge fund investments, which analysts cited by HFMWeek said could lead to redemptions. However, hedge funds can avoid these capital charges if the insurance firm which invests builds an internal model to demonstrate that the risks present do not necessitate a 49 per cent capital holding. According to the EDHEC Risk Institute, that is a distinct possibility. Applying a pragmatic and robust internal model approach to a series of investable hedge fund indices over an observation period covering the recent crisis, the researchers found that a stress test of no more than 25 per cent is appropriate for a well-diversified hedge fund allocation. (...)"
Copyright Black Knight Media Ltd. [Full text]
Pensions & Investments (23/01/2012)
Hedge funds in 2011: short sellers and fixed-income arbitrage lead, emerging markets managers lag
"(...) According to EDHEC-Risk Alternative indexes' December data, short selling and fixed-income arbitrage hedge funds posted the strongest performance in 2011. Hedge funds with a short bias posted returns of 6.5%, likely driven by the plunge in equity markets between May and October when the S&P 500 slumped nearly 20%. Emerging markets managers were down almost 11%, as the MSCI Emerging Markets index lost more than 18% of its value in 2011. (...)"
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Business Times (23/01/2012)
ETFs: A false sense of comparative safety
"(...) Risks of exchange-traded funds (ETFs) have been overblown by recent regulatory scrutiny, though this has prompted more disclosure from providers that should continue, a detailed study of European ETFs by EDHEC-Risk Institute said. Attempts to put distance between ETFs that replicate an index's performance using physical assets and those using swaps have unfairly labelled the latter as riskier products when, in fact, the common practice of securities lending by physically backed ETFs is less regulated, added the research centre. (...)"
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Financial News (23/01/2012)
Hedge fund skills have evaporated, fees are next
"(...) Hedge funds are not exactly going through the pain experienced by the banks but they look set to become hungrier, as the pressure grows on them to cut their charges. (...) Research by the French EDHEC-Risk Institute shows the majority of fund styles suffered a negative return. Even global macro managers, supposedly tooled up for risk-on/risk-off trades, suffered a fall in value of 1.7%. Managed futures funds like AHL are supposed to profit from both falling and rising trends but they dropped by 3.5%. (...)"
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Global Custodian (19/01/2012)
Emerging Markets Strategy Worst for Hedge Funds in 2011, Data Show
"(...) The emerging markets hedge fund strategy posted the worst returns of any strategy in 2011, with a yearly cumulative return of -10.8%, according to EDHEC-Risk Alternative Indexes. The MSCI Emerging Markets Index dropped nearly 20% last year. But that does not signal the end of the emerging markets boom. (...) Still, most hedge fund strategies were down last year. Long/short equity (-6.0%) and funds of funds (-5.9%) were the second and third worst performers, respectively, according to EDHEC-Risk. Short selling recorded the greatest returns at 6.5%, followed by fixed income arbitrage (3.9%) and merger arbitrage (2.0%). (...)"
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FT Adviser (18/01/2012)
ETFs need disclosure and transparency: EDHEC-Risk
"(...) Regulators focus their attention on the risks posed by exchange-traded funds as there is a significant lack of understanding, transparency and disclosure, an academic report has found. The 70-page report, What are the Risks of European ETFs, published by the EDHEC-Risk Institute, said more disclosure on risk was required to allow investors to perform due diligence. The report said more transparency and consistency on revenues and costs were also needed for cost-benefit analyses. It highlighted that there was a risk of confusion between different sorts of exchange-traded products and specifically a risk that retail investors could assume that all ETPs provide the same protections as Ucits ETFs. The report claimed addressing the risks should be a priority for regulators. (...)"
Copyright FT Investment Adviser [Full text]
Responsible Investor (18/01/2012)
RI Briefing
"(...) EDHEC-Risk Institute has presented the findings of its report titled, Performance of Socially Responsible Investment Funds against an Efficient SRI Index: The Impact of Benchmark Choice when Evaluating Active Managers, which was published at the end of 2011. (...)"
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IPE (17/01/2012)
Efficiently weighted indices can lead to SRI outperformance – EDHEC
"(…) Investors can achieve outperformance with socially responsible investment (SRI) indices if they use efficient weights, says financial research centre EDHEC-Risk Institute, despite its earlier studies suggesting SRI funds produced little alpha. Speaking at the recent "Towards efficient and socially responsible indices" presentation in London, Eric Shirbini, business development director at EDHEC-Risk Indices and Benchmarks, said: "You can create SRI outperforming indices using efficient weights. The main issue, really, is the weights used in the index." (...) But Shirbini said cap-weighting in a reduced universe made even less sense than in a broad market portfolio, compounding the inherent problem of concentration in cap-weighted indices. He said the ESG score neglected basic risk management information in correlations and volatilities before adding that state-of-the-art portfolio construction techniques, such as efficient portfolios, could be used to control risks and create better-diversified portfolios. "We know cap-weighted portfolios are inefficient due to their concentration and poor diversification," he said. "Therefore, SRI investment should be about generating alpha using security selection – such as the SRI screen used by French civil servants pension fund ERAFP – and risk management." The ERAFP developed the FTSE EDHEC Risk Efficient Eurobloc ERAFP SRI index, which can be replicated passively, in 2011. The pension fund runs a 100% SRI strategy. (…)"
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Financial News (17/01/2012)
Risk institute calls for new ETF designations
"(...) The financial research arm of the EDHEC Business School calls physical and synthetic ETFs “economically equivalent operations” and said that with proper counterparty risk management, it made "little sense" to pit the two against each other. The group warned regulators that creating an “artificial distinction” between physical and synthetic funds could lead to misselling. Published just weeks before the European Securities and Markets Authority releases new guidelines for ETFs, the study came as a boon to synthetic funds, which are generally characterised as riskier because, unlike physical ETFs, they do not invest in the underlying assets. EDHEC sought in its report to calm the hype surrounding the ETF industry as a whole, which it said represents just a fraction of the overall fund management industry and is highly regulated under the Ucits, or Undertakings for Collective Investment in Transferable Securities, directive. (...)"
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Citywire (17/01/2012)
BlackRock criticised for ‘Orwellian doublethink’ over ETFs
"(…) The EDHEC-Risk Institute has criticised BlackRock, the parent firm of iShares, for ‘Orwellian doublethink’ or ‘double-talk’ over its stance on labelling exchange traded funds. EDHEC has hit out at the ETF issuer for its seemingly contradictory views over how best to label ETFs, in response to the European and US regulators. EDHEC said: ‘Differences in naming conventions or markers, if any, should result from differences in economic exposures and payoff structures at the overall fund level. ‘An interesting little known fact is that this is the position defended by BlackRock vis-à-vis the SEC [Securities and Exchange Commission].’ EDHEC added that BlackRock suggested to the SEC ‘confusion may exist regarding the appropriate naming convention for mutual funds employing derivatives as a primary investment strategy.…We therefore suggest that the Commission clarify that actual economic exposure through reference assets be used.’ However, although EDHEC said naming an ETF based on its actual economic exposure is ‘perfectly sensible,’ it said ‘this is hard to reconcile with BlackRock’s European position’ as documented in its contribution to the ESMA consultation. In this, BlackRock said: ‘It would be appropriate in our view for the ETF-identifier to clearly identify whether it is a synthetic or physical ETF, which can easily be established through the principal investment policy of the fund.’ EDHEC said: ‘This may be a case of Orwellian doublethink, unless it is simply double-talk dictated by differences in competitive landscapes on each side of the Atlantic.’ (…)"
Copyright Citywire [Full text]
Funds Europe (January 2012)
EDHEC Research: The satisfaction index
"(…) With more money going into index strategies, Felix Goltz and Lin Tang from the EDHEC-Risk Institute look at index usage and satisfaction levels – which are low – as well as key issues with current indices for equity, bonds and volatility. Indexation continues to play an important role in global asset allocation. Total worldwide assets under internal indexed management rose to $5.99 trillion (€4.48 trillion) as of 30 June, 2011, a 25% increase over $4.78 trillion the year earlier. In view of the growing volumes in assets under management in passive indexing strategies, a great many index providers have emerged worldwide, not only the organisations specialising in the index service but also stock exchanges and investment banks. Each provider has created or is creating a host of indices representing a full complement of asset classes, as well as asset class sub-segments. Country-based capitalisation-weighted indices are often used as a bellwether for the economy as they are supposed to represent market trends. Nowadays, a growing demand for indices as investment vehicles has led to innovations including new weighting schemes and alternative definitions of sub-segments. (...)"
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FTfm (16/01/2012)
EDHEC warns against ETF labels
"(...) European regulators should steer clear of creating artificial distinctions between “physical” and “synthetic” exchange traded funds, according to the EDHEC-Risk Institute, part of EDHEC Business School. In a paper published on Monday on the risks of European ETFs, EDHEC said there was “no reason to attach stigma” to the use of derivatives by regulated investment funds. EDHEC also criticised BlackRock, owner of iShares, the biggest provider of physical ETFs, for “Orwellian doublethink” and “double-talk” in adopting different positions on the use of derivatives in responses to European and US regulators. EDHEC cited a recent letter from BlackRock to the US Securities and Exchange Commission that supported naming funds based on their economic exposure, and contrasted it with a response to European regulators in which the manager called for a clear identifier to establish if an ETF was a physical or synthetic fund. (...)"
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FTfm (16/01/2012)
Research shows ‘new balanced’ style fails
"(...) Academics have been pointing out the pitfalls of this approach for some time, according to Noël Amenc, director of the EDHEC-risk Institute. Focusing on the “financial factors” such as equity or interest rate risk rather than the “economic or legal characteristics of the assets” is more meaningful for risk analysis, he says, adding that “this line of thinking, which has been popular in the academic literature for 50 years, has been gaining in popularity with institutional investors”. (...) EDHEC’s Mr Amenc proposes risk factor analysis as a basis for portfolio construction. “By focusing on risk factors rather than asset classes, they better capture the reality of diversification.” (...)"
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La Tribune (16/01/2012)
Les sociétés de gestion s'opposent à la taxe Tobin
"(...) D'ailleurs, dans une lettre adressée au Premier ministre français François Fillon, Noël Amenc, directeur de l'EDHEC Risk Insitute, ne recommande pas cette taxe indiquant qu'elle serait néfaste pour la zone euro en général. (...)"
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Funds Europe (16/01/2012)
Europe's exchange-traded products shrink 5%
"(…) But a new report by the EDHEC-Risk Institute says the distinction between physical and synthetic ETPs is misleading and conveys “a false sense of comparative safety”. Both types of ETP are exposed to counterparty risk, especially as physical ETP providers frequently engage in securities lending, says the report. The EDHEC report adds that counterparty risk should be measured according to the collateralisation and quality of collateral used by ETP providers, not by the type of ETP. EDHEC's report also says that the vast majority of European ETPs are managed within the Ucits framework and have the same levels of security and risk as any Ucits fund. (...)"
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L'Agefi (16/01/2011)
Les ETFs ne seraient pas plus risqués que les fonds UCITS traditionnels, selon l'EDHEC-Risk Institute
"(...) L'Edhec-Risk institute vient de publier les résultats d'une étude sur le risque supporté par les ETF (Exchange traded funds ou trackers) selon laquelle « la très grande majorité des ETFs Européens sont gérés dans un cadre UCITS et en ce sens offrent un niveau de sécurité et sont potentiellement exposés aux mêmes risques que n'importe quel fonds UCITS ». Par ailleurs, les chercheurs concluent aussi « qu'il n'est pas logique d'opposer d'une part les produits de réplication physique et de réplication synthétique, et d'autre part, de faire la différence entre les swaps financés et non-financés. Ces deux distinctions sont peu pertinentes dans la pratique et donne un faux sentiment de sécurité comparative ». (...)"
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Financial News (13/01/2012)
Eurozone financial industry turns guns on "catastrophic" Tobin tax
"(...) The comments come in the same week that Noël Amenc, the head of the prestigious French-based EDHEC Business School, also attacked the proposals in an open letter to French prime minister, François Fillon. He said such a tax “either fails to reduce the volatility of returns, or leads to an increase in volatility”. He said it would also reduce the price of financial securities, undermining eurozone leaders’ hopes of reducing the debt burden of their most vulnerable economies. (...)"
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IPE (12/01/2012)
Resistance mounts to "Tobin tax" as cost estimated at €116bn
"(…) France's EDHEC Risk Institute meanwhile predicted that the Tobin Tax, named after Nobel laureate James Tobin, was unlikely to reduce overall volatility. Outlining EDHEC Business School professor Raman Uppal's view on the tax, it said: "The Tobin tax reduces speculative activity in financial markets, but this tax also drives away investors who provide liquidity and stabilise prices." It concluded that, while the tax had its advantages and disadvantages, the net effect on volatility would be small. (…)"
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Financial News (11/01/2012)
Tobin tax attracts German and French objections
"(...) Two leading institutions from Germany and France have made what is thought to be the first public appeals from their respective countries to abandon attempts to push through a financial transaction tax, saying it would impose a heavy burden on ordinary citizens and damage their financial services industries. Separately, in a letter to France’s Prime Minister, François Fillon, Noël Amenc, Professor of Finance at EDHEC Business School, wrote: “The President of the Republic (Nicolas Sarkozy) has announced his intention to establish a tax on financial transactions by this spring. "The introduction of a Tobin tax, either in France alone or across Europe, is a proposal we do not recommend. This could not only have negative effects for the French financial industry, but more generally, it could also have repercussions for the entire eurozone. "Unless all major financial centres introduced it, the Tobin tax would appear easy to circumvent by routing transactions through countries where the tax is not imposed. Within this context, if France alone were to push forward without its European partners, this would only lead to further isolation and ultimately render the initiative ineffective. (...)"
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L'Agefi (10/01/2012)
Economie : EDHEC-Risk Institute interpelle le gouvernement sur l'inopportunité d'imposer une taxe Tobin en France
"(...) Dans une lettre ouverte du 10 janvier 2012 adressée au premier ministre français, qui fait elle-même référence à un précédent courrier envoyé en juillet 2012 au commissaire en charge du marché intérieur et des services européen, Michel Barnier, EDHEC-Risk Institute souligne les difficultés et les risques liés à la mise en oeuvre d'une taxation des transactions financières en France. Les recommandations d'EDHEC-Risk Institute s'appuient sur une étude réalisée par le professeur Raman Uppal. Cette étude présente des résultats théoriques sur la taxation des transactions financières, mais aussi des résultats empiriques sur ses effets, ainsi qu'une mise au point sur les difficultés de sa mise en oeuvre. (...)"
Copyright L'Agefi [Full text - French]
Institutional Asset Manager (10/01/2012)
AXA Investment Managers extends support of EDHEC-Risk Institute research into impact of regulation and institutional investment
"(...) AXA Investment Managers (AXA IM) has renewed its partnership with EDHEC-Risk Institute for its research chair on “Regulation and Institutional Investment”. The next study to be produced as part of the 3-year extension will examine Defined Benefit and Defined Contribution arrangements, including the adequacy of risk-sharing mechanisms, and the appeal of hybrid solutions given the regulatory, social and economic environment. As pension funds continue to face multiple challenges from lengthening life expectancy to extreme market volatility, and as regulatory initiatives evolve at an accelerated pace, the interaction between regulation and institutional investment has become a key issue. As a significant partner to institutional investors, AXA IM has therefore committed to a further three-year research partnership with the EDHEC-Risk Institute to raise awareness and propose solutions that address such regulatory driven challenges. (...)"
Copyright GFM Ltd. [Full text]
Risk.net (03/01/2012)
EDHEC and SocGen release rationale for structured products in Asia
"(...) Brisk development of the equity derivatives market in Asia is opening the door to further developments in structured products, according to a research report released in the last quarter of 2011 by EDHEC-Risk Institute and Société Générale. Making up for a dearth of research covering Asia's investment markets, the EDHEC-Risk Institute and Société Générale Corporate & Investment Banking (SG CIB) have clubbed together to create Structured equity investment strategies for long-term Asian investors, a 92-page document released in the final quarter of 2011 that reveals the natural attraction to structured investments in the region. Asian equity investing is particularly attractive given the region's growth story and the shifting balance of economic power, according to Frédéric Ducoulombier, director, EDHEC Risk Institute-Asia. (...)"
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La Tribune (02/01/2012)
La gestion d'actifs en alerte
"(...) Les défis seront aussi d'ordre réglementaire en 2012. « Avec Bâle III et Solvabilité II, l'industrie de la gestion d'actifs subit une double peine réglementaire », indiquait récemment Noël Amenc, directeur de l'EDHEC Risk Institute, dans un entretien accordé à « La Tribune ». (...)"
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France Info (01/01/2012)
Le grand retour de la TVA sociale
Interview de Noël Amenc, directeur de l'EDHEC-Risk Institute
"(...) Lors de ses voeux, le Président de la république a annoncé vouloir mettre en place cette TVA sociale. Une proposition qu'il avait déjà formulée lors de la précédente campagne électorale en 2007. (...) Si son intérêt est évident pour réduire le coût du travail, la TVA sociale risque de faire augmenter les prix et donc de diminuer d'autant le pouvoir d'achat des consommateurs. Pour le PS c'est un handicap majeur et cela reviendrait à faire payer par les ménages la baisse des charges des entreprises. Et surtout ainsi calibrée, elle risque de plomber la consommation et donc la croissance. Mais il existe une façon de contourner ce risque de récession, selon l'EDHEC. Noël Amenc est professeur de finance et directeur de l'EDHEC Risk Intitute. Il a signé une étude dans ce sens. (...)"
Copyright France Info [Full text - French]