Download or read book Handbook of Asian Finance written by David Lee Kuo Chuen and published by Academic Press. This book was released on 2014-05-15 with total page 531 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Participants in Asian financial markets have witnessed the unprecedented growth and sophistication of their investments since the 1997 crisis. Handbook of Asian Finance: REITs, Trading, and Fund Performance analyzes the forces behind these growth rates. Insights into banking, fund performance, and the effects of trading technologies for practitioners to tax evasion, market manipulation, and corporate governance issues are all here, presented by expert scholars. Offering broader and deeper coverage than other handbooks, the Handbook of Asian Finance: REITs, Trading, and Fund Performance explains what is going on in Asia today. - Presents the only micro- and market-related analysis of pan-Asian finance available today - Explores the implications implicit in the expansion of sovereign funds and the growth of the hedge fund and real estate fund management industries - Investigates the innovations in technology that have ushered in faster capital flow and larger trading volumes

Download or read book Hedge Fund Activism written by Alon Brav and published by Now Publishers Inc. This book was released on 2010 with total page 76 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hedge Fund Activism begins with a brief outline of the research literature and describes datasets on hedge fund activism.

Download or read book Socially Responsible Investment written by Russell Sparkes and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2003-03-14 with total page 422 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over recent years there has been rapid consumer-led growth in investing in socially responsible companies to the extent that it has had an influence on corporate policies. New regulations recognise the public interest by requiring all pension funds to declare their ethical policy. Investors can no longer just consider the financial aspects of a company before investing but also have to consider the complex world of ethical investments. Should the ethical policy take precedence over the financial aspects? Should policies be inclusive or exclusive? What percentage of a company's income has to come from unacceptable sources before the source is excluded? Should any exclusion policy also extend to those involved in selling or transporting goods deemed unacceptable? This is the first book to look at socially responsible investment from the perspective of the institutional investor, who will be led through the complex dilemmas of socially responsible investment with practical examples and advice.

Download or read book The Performance of Socially Responsible Investment Funds in Europe written by Eva Maria Kreibohm and published by BoD – Books on Demand. This book was released on 2016-11-30 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Socially responsible investing (SRI) is an investment approach that combines investors’ financial as well as nonfinancial goals in the security selection process. Technically, investors can engage in SRI either by directly investing in companies that implement corporate social activities or by investing their money in SRI funds, which apply screening criteria to select securities. The screening process applied by the SRI funds has led to controversy among academics regarding whether the use of SRI screens in the security selection process influences the financial performance of the funds. The empirical study analyzes whether or not the screening process applied by such funds influences their financial performance. Previous research mostly has focused on analyzing the performance of SRI equity funds established in the United States. The study at hand not only includes SRI equity funds, but also SRI balanced and fixed income funds established in Europe, the biggest market for SRI globally. The study provides unexpected results that are not only of interest for investors, who want to get a better understanding of the effect on the financial performance of their portfolios in case SRI funds are added. The results are also relevant for SRI fund managers, who are interested in promoting their funds and attracting (new) investors, and for academics, whose research interests are e. g., located in the fields of SRI, fund portfolio performances and market efficiencies.

Download or read book Investing for Change written by Augustin Landier and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2009 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This text shows that citizens can change the globalized world in the direction of many common values by being a socially conscious investor. The authors argue that in fact globalization is helping create a shared concern for many issues around the planet.

Download or read book Pensions at Work written by Jack Quarter and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pension funds have come to play an increasingly important role within the new economy. According to Statistics Canada, in 2006, trusteed pension funds in Canada had $836 billion of assets and represented the savings of 4.6 million Canadian workers. Pensions at Work is a unique collection of papers that uses a labour perspective to deal with the socially responsible investment of pension funds. Featuring leading Canadian and international scholars, it builds on existing scholarship on socially responsible investment and on the growing interest of the Canadian labour movement in joint trusteeship. What is unique about this collection is that it synthesizes three distinct themes - socially responsible investment, pension funds, and labour studies. The contributors address an array of critical issues such as gaps in the education of union trustees of pension funds, the impact of human capital criteria on shareholder returns, the influence of corporate engagement upon corporate performance, and the nature of public-private partnerships (PPPs). Although the essays in Pensions at Work all address the nexus between socially responsible investment, pension funds, and unions, each looks at a particular manifestation of that relationship through a different disciplinary lens. This collection moves the discussion to pension funds in which union representatives are also trustees, a relatively new approach that will be of great interest to institutional investors, the labour movement, and instructors in labour studies programs.

Download or read book Hedge Fund Activism in Japan written by John Buchanan and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2012-05-24 with total page 389 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hedge fund activism is an expression of shareholder primacy, an idea that has come to dominate discussion of corporate governance theory and practice worldwide over the past two decades. This book provides a thorough examination of public and often confrontational hedge fund activism in Japan in the period between 2001 and the full onset of the global financial crisis in 2008. In Japan this shareholder-centric conception of the company espoused by activist hedge funds clashed with the alternative Japanese conception of the company as an enduring organisation or a 'community'. By analysing this clash, the book derives a fresh view of the practices underpinning corporate governance in Japan and offers suggestions regarding the validity of the shareholder primacy ideas currently at the heart of US and UK beliefs about the purpose of the firm.

Download or read book Strategic Financial Management Casebook written by Rajesh Kumar and published by Academic Press. This book was released on 2017-01-05 with total page 605 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Strategic Financial Management Casebook strategically uses integrative case studies—cases that do not emphasize specific subjects such as capital budgeting or value based management—to provide a framework for understanding strategic financial management. By featuring holistic presentations, the book puts readers into the shoes of those responsible for the world's largest wealth creators. It covers strategies of growth, mergers and acquisitions, financial performance analysis over the past decade, wealth created in terms of stock returns since its listing in stock market, investment and financial decisions, cost of capital, and corporate valuation. In addition, the casebook also discusses corporate restructuring activities undertaken by each company. Each chapter follows a template to facilitate learning, and each features an Excel-based case analysis worksheet that includes a complete data set for financial analysis and valuation. - Introduces a conceptual framework for integrating strategy and finance for value creation - Emphasizes the roles of corporate governance, corporate social responsibility, and risk management in value creation - Encourages an analysis of investment, financing, and dividend decisions - Examines non-financial factors that contribute to value

Download or read book Perspectives in Sustainable Equity Investing written by Guillaume Coqueret and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2022-03-08 with total page 135 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sustainable investing has recently gained traction throughout the world. This trend has multiple sources, which span from genuine ethical concerns to hopes of performance boosting, and also encompass risk mitigation. The resulting appetite for green assets is impacting the decisions of many investors. Perspectives in Sustainable Equity Investing is an up-to-date review of the academic literature on sustainable equity investing. It covers more than 800 academic sources grouped into six thematic chapters. Designed for corporate sustainability and financial management professionals, this is an ideal reference for ESG-driven financiers (both retail and institutional). Students majoring in finance or economics with some background or interest in ESG concerns would also find this compact overview useful. Key Features: Introduces the reader to terms and nomenclature used in the field. Surveys the link between sustainability and performance (including risk). Details the integration of sustainable criteria in complex portfolio optimization. Reviews the financial liabilities induced by climate change.

Download or read book Investing for Good written by Peter D. Kinder and published by . This book was released on 1994-03-10 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From three of the founders of the field of socially responsible investing, and the authors of the pioneering volume Ethical Investing, here is a completely up-to-date guide that teaches you how to create an investment portfolio that makes money without making you sacrifice your principles. Peter D. Kinder, Steven D. Lydenberg, and Amy L. Domini have made careers of identifying investment opportunities that respect clients' social and political interests and have a strong track record that proves you can invest profitably and still respect your conscience. Now they explain their strategies in a book that allows individual investors to guide their own course or better communicate with their own investment counselor. Using their techniques, you can select, research, and screen companies according to a list of criteria that distinguishes publicly traded companies by the soundness of their policies in areas you care about - whether the companies are "green" or have defense contracts, what their employee practices are, if they test products on animals, where their overseas investments go, and much more. Investors will also be able to use these principles and strategies to control and direct their assets, whether they choose to invest in mutual funds, pension funds, or stocks and bonds. Pension fund managers and other institutional investors have discovered socially responsible investing. Investments in socially screened vehicles increased ten-fold to $500 billion in the last eight years. The authors' Domini 400 Social Index fueled some of this demand by offering investors the first broad-based index to track U.S. common stocks. Now, with this new book, everyone has the opportunity to use his or her money wisely and still be responsible to society's needs.

Download or read book Hedge Fund Alpha written by John M. Longo and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 2009 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hedge funds are perhaps the hottest topic in finance today, but little material of substance to date has been written on the topic. Most books focus on how to set up a hedge fund and the basic strategies, while few to none focus on what matters most: generating and understanding investment performance. This book takes an exclusive look at the latter, including an analysis of the areas that are most likely to generate strong investment returns OCo namely, the emerging markets of Brazil, Russia, India and China. The book will be invaluable to not only financial professionals, but anyone interested in learning about hedge funds and their future.

Download or read book Hedge Funds written by Vikas Agarwal and published by Now Publishers Inc. This book was released on 2005 with total page 85 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hedge Funds summarizes the academic research on hedge funds and commodity trading advisors. The hedge fund industry has grown tremendously over the recent years. According to some industry estimates, hedge funds have increased from $39 million in 1990 to about $972 million in 2004 and the total number of hedge funds has gone up from 610 to 7,436 over the same period. At the same time, hedge fund strategies have changed significantly. In 1990 the macro strategy dominated the industry while in 2004 the equity hedge strategy had the largest share of the market. There has also been a shift in the type of investor in hedge funds. In the early 1990's the typical investor was a high net-worth individual investor, today the typical investor is an institutional investor. Thus, the hedge fund market has not only grown tremendously, but the nature of the market has changed. Despite the enormous growth of this industry, there is limited information available on hedge funds. As a result, there is a need for rigorous research from both the investors' and regulators' point of view. Investors need research to better understand their investment and their risk exposure. This research also helps investors recognize the extent of diversification benefits hedge funds offer in combination with investments in traditional asset classes, such as stocks and bonds. Regulators can use this research to identify situations where regulation may be needed to protect investors' interests and to understand the impact hedge funds trading strategies have on the stability of the financial markets. The first part of Hedge Funds summarizes hedge fund performance, including comparisons of risk-return characteristics of hedge funds with those of mutual funds, factors driving hedge fund returns, and persistence in hedge fund performance. The second part reviews research regarding the unique contractual features and characteristics of hedge funds and their influence on the risk-return tradeoffs. The third part reviews the role of hedge funds in a portfolio including the extent of diversification benefits and limitations of standard mean-variance framework for asset allocation. Finally, the authors summarize the research on the biases in hedge fund databases.

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Hedge Funds written by Douglas Cumming and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021 with total page 577 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This handbook provides a comprehensive look at the hedge fund industry from a global perspective.

Download or read book Grow the Pie written by Alex Edmans and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-11-11 with total page 541 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Should companies be run for profit or purpose? This book shows how they can deliver both-based on rigorous evidence and an actionable framework. This edition, updated to include the pandemic and latest research, explains how managers, investors and citizens can put purpose into practice-and overcome the difficult trade-offs that hold them back.

Download or read book ESG and Responsible Institutional Investing Around the World A Critical Review written by Pedro Matos and published by CFA Institute Research Foundation. This book was released on 2020-05-29 with total page 82 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This survey examines the vibrant academic literature on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing. While there is no consensus on the exact list of ESG issues, responsible investors increasingly assess stocks in their portfolios based on nonfinancial data on environmental impact (e.g., carbon emissions), social impact (e.g., employee satisfaction), and governance attributes (e.g., board structure). The objective is to reduce exposure to investments that pose greater ESG risks or to influence companies to become more sustainable. One active area of research at present involves assessing portfolio risk exposure to climate change. This literature review focuses on institutional investors, which have grown in importance such that they have now become the largest holders of shares in public companies globally. Historically, institutional investors tended to concentrate their ESG efforts mostly on corporate governance (the “G” in ESG). These efforts included seeking to eliminate provisions that restrict shareholder rights and enhance managerial power, such as staggered boards, supermajority rules, golden parachutes, and poison pills. Highlights from this section: · There is no consensus on the exact list of ESG issues and their materiality. · The ESG issue that gets the most attention from institutional investors is climate change, in particular their portfolio companies’ exposure to carbon risk and “stranded assets.” · Investors should be positioning themselves for increased regulation, with the regulatory agenda being more ambitious in the European Union than in the United States. Readers might come away from this survey skeptical about the potential for ESG investing to affect positive change. I prefer to characterize the current state of the literature as having a “healthy dose of skepticism,” with much more remaining to be explored. Here, I hope the reader comes away with a call to action. For the industry practitioner, I believe that the investment industry should strive to achieve positive societal goals. CFA Institute provides an exemplary case in its Future of Finance series (www.cfainstitute.org/research/future-finance). For the academic community, I suggest we ramp up research aimed at tackling some of the open questions around the pressing societal goals of ESG investing. I am optimistic that practitioners and academics will identify meaningful ways to better harness the power of global financial markets for addressing the pressing ESG issues facing our society.

Download or read book Responsible Investment in Times of Turmoil written by Wim Vandekerckhove and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2011-03-29 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The SRI phenomenon is said to be entering the mainstream of financial intermediation. From a fairly marginal practice promoted or campaigned for by NGO’s and at odds with financial practice and orthodoxy it grew into well formulated policy adopted by a wide range of investors. Academic literature on SRI has also boomed on the assumption that mainstreaming is taking place. However, little thinking has been carried out on questions specifically arising from this alleged ‘mainstreaming’. This book, addressed to those with a scholarly or practitioner’s interest in SRI, starts filling this neglected dimension. Today, one cannot ignore the difficulties of main stream financing. The financial spheres are trembling globally in one of the worst crises since the 1930’s. As a response to the crisis, the intermediation of ‘financial responsibility’ will undoubtedly be the subject of new regulation and scrutinizing. This book looks into what these turbulences will imply for SRI. In view of these circumstances, one might or even should, ask oneself whether the phenomenon was not an empty fad during the exuberant high of financial euphoria that came abruptly to an end with current financial crises. To put it rather sec: are financial intermediaries that promote ‘sustainability’ credible, while it is obvious that some developments in financial intermediation -predictably, as some say- were unsustainable? Is this an opportunity for enhancing SRI because of the strength and superiority it has developed or will it disappear due to a return to financial myopia? This book is the first to question the future of SRI in such a radical way.

Download or read book Socially Responsible Investment in a Global Environment written by Hung-Gay Fung and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2010-01-01 with total page 191 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The authors have done an excellent job explaining the development and practice of Socially Responsible Investment (SRI). Under the recent recognition of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in Asia and its strong emphasis by US and European corporations, this book provides important guidance to students and professionals who are interested in the effects and implications of SRI. This book is truly informative and should be on the reading list of all fund managers and CFOs of international corporations which are serious about CSR. Louis T.W. Cheng, Hong Kong Polytechnic University Individual investors and corporate heads have the responsibility to keep abreast of major changes in the marketplace. Socially responsible investment is one of those changes. Fung, Law and Yau provide, in a single source, a great opportunity to get up to date on an area that will be a force for years to come. I encourage any thoughtful investor or manager to read this book. Thomas Schneeweis, University of Massachusetts Amherst, US Socially responsible investment (SRI) is becoming increasingly popular and can be potentially rewarding to all parties concerned. This book discusses the opportunities, challenges, and practices of SRI in a global financial environment in a consistent and integrated framework of risk management. It also covers a wide variety of environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) issues related to various participants, such as values-based retail, institutional investors, corporations, banks, supranational agencies, and non-governmental organizations. Readers are provided with the perspectives of SRI from various players in the financial community from values-based investors to fiduciaries to supranational agencies. The authors analyse the incorporation of ESG issues into investment practices within a regulatory, legal, reputational, and operational risk management framework. Academics, corporate executives, government regulators and policymakers, bankers, and non-governmental organizations involved with sustainable development will find much of interest in this book.