April 2026
17Apr

US. New York City to Spend $4 Billion From Pension Funds on Affordable Homes

A 33-story mixed-income high-rise in Midtown Manhattan, with rents as low as $1,000 for one-bedroom apartments. A 30-unit apartment building in the Bronx for survivors of domestic violence who have struggled with homelessness. A Brooklyn building for formerly incarcerated women and their families. These are some of the affordable housing projects that have been financed in the past several years with money from New York City’s public pension funds, which provide retirement benefits for the city’s police officers, teachers, firefighters...

April 17, 2026
News,
Read more...
13Apr

Europe’s biggest pension investor eyes private markets boost

 Europe's biggest pension investor, APG, will increase its allocation to private markets to ​just over 30% and sees current credit market flux as a potential buying opportunity, its chief investment ‌officer for private investments told Reuters. APG invests around 600 billion euros ($702.00 billion) for clients including ABP, the Netherlands' biggest pension fund. Around 26% of its assets are currently in private markets but it would add more after ongoing changes to investment rules in the Netherlands, Patrick ​Kanters said. The...

April 13, 2026
News,
Read more...
01Apr

EU finance faces growing risks from geopolitical pressures, watchdogs warn

European financial watchdogs have warned that the war in the Middle East and fast-growing private finance markets could increase risks for the EU financial system. The European Supervisory Authorities — the European Banking Authority (EBA), the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority (EIOPA) and the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) — said geopolitical tensions could affect financial markets through higher energy prices, inflationary pressures and weaker economic growth, ESMA announced on Tuesday. They said they had previously warned about the...

April 1, 2026
News,
Read more...
01Apr

Dutch pension funds cut US exposure as rebalancing drives shift to Europe

Dutch pension funds were net sellers of US assets last year, reallocating capital towards Europe, according to figures from regulator DNB. On balance, funds sold €30bn of US equities and bonds, while purchasing €23bn of European securities. In 2025, pension funds sold €18bn of US government and corporate bonds and €12bn of equities. The decline was largely driven by civil servant scheme ABP, which divested more than €10bn of US government bonds. While US debt securities were predominantly sold, flows into European fixed...

April 1, 2026
News, ,
Read more...
01Apr

2024 Sustainability Investment Report

By Government Pension Investment Fund  The Government Pension Investment Fund, Japan (GPIF) has published the "2024 Sustainability Investment Report" as a way of reporting on GPIF's sustainability-related initiative, including Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG), and the effects thereof to all pension beneficiaries and other stakeholders. In the "2024 Sustainability Investment Report," in addition to presenting the initiatives on sustainability investment undertaken during the year and the ESG evaluation of the portfolio, we also conducted the "Analysis of the Exercise of...

April 1, 2026
Books, Books, Reports, Sustainability, , , ,
Read more...
01Apr

Climate Change as a Threat Multiplier in Contemporary Conflicts: Pathways, Evidence, and Legal-Policy Responses

By Hope Tendo This paper examines climate change as a “threat multiplier” in contemporary conflicts by analysing its causal pathways, empirical support, and the legal-policy responses required to mitigate associated security risks. It argues that climate change rarely operates as a direct driver of violence but instead intensifies existing socio-economic, political, and institutional vulnerabilities. The study evaluates scholarly and policy literature demonstrating that climatic stress interacts with fragile governance, contested land and resource tenure, livelihood insecurity, migration pressures, and state...

April 1, 2026
Articles, System Sustainability, , ,
Read more...
01Apr

Large Language Models in Financial Decision-Making: A Methodological Framework for Evaluating AI Trading Strategies

By Theo Nicolas Sitjar Large Language Models (LLMs) offer new possibilities for financial decision-making, but evaluating their effectiveness in trading requires systematic approaches. This paper describes a practical framework for assessing LLM performance in stock market scenarios. Our method follows a 5-step process: data preparation, prompt engineering, LLM inference, backtesting, and statistical analysis. We include memory mechanisms and standard risk metrics to evaluate trading strategies comprehensively. Through testing against fifteen traditional quantitative baseline strategies, we examine both the potential benefits...

April 1, 2026
Articles, Investment, , , ,
Read more...

March 2026
31Mar

US issues draft rules on private assets in 401k plans

The U.S. Department of Labor on Monday issued long-awaited proposed new rules intended to clarify how trustees can add alternative assets ranging from private ​equity to cryptocurrencies to 401(k) retirement plans. The measure, which is intended to ‌ease long-standing barriers to incorporating these less liquid assets in American retirement nest eggs, follows an executive order by President Donald Trump last summer and could clear the way for alternative ​asset management firms to tap a large and potentially lucrative new source ​of capital. Shares...

March 31, 2026
News, ,
Read more...
31Mar

Australian $240 billion pension fund snaps up Japanese, European stocks and UK bonds

Australia's No.2 pension fund has ​increased its global equities, Australian and British bond investments, some of the world's most sold-off ‌asset classes, in the past month to take advantage of financial market volatility created by the Iran war. The Australian Retirement Trust, which has A$350 billion ($240.42 billion) in funds under management, is carrying out more direct market trading than usual, according to ​Jimmy Louca, a senior portfolio manager at the fund. ART has a dynamic asset allocation strategy in ​which...

March 31, 2026
News, ,
Read more...
30Mar

US. Private-Credit Wobbles Could Prove Perilous for Trump

At a meeting of the Financial Stability Oversight Council this month, Trump administration officials moved ahead with plans to scale back scrutiny of hedge funds, encouraged financial firms to experiment with artificial intelligence and lamented the burden of onerous regulation. What wasn’t discussed during the public session was the segment of the financial system that has Washington and Wall Street most on edge: private credit. The once-booming corner of lending markets has been showing signs of shakiness recently, raising alarm...

March 30, 2026
News,
Read more...