Pension funds should allocate towards infrastructure and growth assets as government bonds now provide “return-free risk”, says Baroness Altmann

The search for alpha is expected to lead to a long-term shift to higher emerging markets allocations, both in equity and fixed income, according to a survey of institutional investors by Vontobel.

Several large European banks including BNP Paribas, Credit Suisse, ING, Natixis, Rabobank, and UBS made the headlines earlier this month when environmental groups alleged that they had financed some USD10 billion of oil trading from the Amazon rainforest over the past decade, despite its deleterious impact on the environment and the livelihoods of the indigenous peoples in the region.

A revamp of the Oyster Sustainable Europe fund was announced in June, with European equities specialist Zadig Asset Management being brought in to manage the portfolio.

Value investing could see a revival as economic activity picks up in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, as asset managers predict that lowly-rated stocks could outperform in the upturn.

Europe is poised to continue outperforming the US for the rest of the year, according to New York-based global asset manager Neuberger Berman, as uncertainty over the outcome of the US presidential election and the ongoing coronavirus pandemic continue to weigh on markets.

Impax Asset Management says there will be “winners and losers” in the economic transition to a more sustainable economy, as trends continue to be accelerated in the post-pandemic rebuilding process. 

The investment industry needs to emulate the aircraft industry in the way it learns from past mistakes, in order to successfully pilot investors through the Covid-19 crisis, according to new research from the Thinking Ahead Institute.

Over a third of all shares on the UK’s FTSE 100 and 250 indices are now owned by North American asset managers, as the popularity of low-cost passive index funds and ETFs has surged.

Concern is growing over a likely spike in defaults among so-called ‘zombie’ companies that have stayed afloat during the coronavirus pandemic by relying on government stimulus and increasing their debt loads, but will struggle to keep servicing loans as government schemes roll back.

Fixed income managers have seen a hectic first half of the year in 2020. In the US, a typical year’s worth of new issues was printed in the space of just four months, as the onset of the pandemic forced companies to take urgent action to shore up their finances.