Suchergebnisse

This book analyses investment management policies for institutional investors. It is composed of four parts. The first one analyses the various types of institutional investors, institutions which, with different objectives, professionally manage portfolios of financial and real assets on behalf of a wide variety of individuals. This part goes on with an in-depth analysis of the economic, technical and regulatory characteristics of the different types of investment funds and of other types of asset management products, which have a high rate of substitutability with investment funds and represent their natural competitors. The second part of the book identifies and investigates the stages of the investment portfolio management. Given the importance of strategic asset allocation in explaining the ex post performance of any type of investment portfolio, this part provides an in-depth analysis of asset allocation methods, illustrating the different theoretical and operational solutions available to institutional investors. The third part describes performance assessment, its breakdown and risk control, with an in-depth examination of performance evaluation techniques, returns-based style analysis approaches, and performance attribution models. Finally, the fourth part deals with the subject of diversification into alternative asset classes, identifying the common characteristics and their possible role within the framework of investment management policies. This part analyses hedge funds, private equity, real estate, commodities, and currency overlay techniques.

AbstractThe increasing interest of investors in environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues has prompted asset managers to develop new approaches to strategic asset allocation that can effectively integrate ESG factors into the optimization process. This study reviews the main techniques of the most recent ESG‐efficient portfolio optimization models. Furthermore, this study conducts an empirical investigation to identify the impact of ESG constraints on mean–variance efficient allocations, and extends existing approaches by incorporating a downside risk framework. Our findings reveal that social and combined ESG ratings mitigate the negative skewness of portfolio returns, and that ESG rating, environmental rating, social rating, and combined ESG rating allow the sustainable investor to incur lower transaction costs.

AbstractOver recent years, investors' attention on the environment, social responsibility, and governance (ESG) has been growing. At the same time, managers, investors, and regulators are interested in ascertaining whether mutual funds that invest in ESG‐compliant assets perform better than those with a low ESG commitment. The sustainability of funds' portfolios can be measured by ESG ratings, a measure of the financially material ESG factors of the securities held by a fund. Our study therefore aims to verify whether funds with high ESG ratings outperform funds with low ESG ratings, considering the risks taken, including higher moments, and costs borne by investors. Our analysis is carried out on a sample of 634 European mutual funds. By using data envelopment analysis, it provides evidence of the superior efficiency of funds investing in high ESG‐rated securities.