News & Knowledge

2020, 22 January

Kempen sharpens its focus on alternative investments with the appointment of Anne Mei Poppe

Kempen Capital Management (Kempen) has strengthened its alternative solutions team with the appointment of Anne Mei Poppe as alternative investment specialist. Her appointment demonstrates Kempen’s commitment to boosting growth in alternative investments.

2020, 21 January

Kempen Real Estate Update: Barbarians at the gates

A recurring and important question regarding all shapes and forms of prudent investing across all asset classes and instruments is “how do I get my money back?”. Whereas larger institutional investors may have the luxury of investing with nearly perpetual time horizons, for retail investors and institutional investors with stringent spending requirements (foundations, endowments, insurance etc..), this question is of the utmost importance as often they do not have this luxury option. With the recent suspension of trading at several UK open-ended retail property funds (also known as gating), and redemptions in one US ODCE fund, we explore this topic further and look into how investors can avoid being caught in gated property funds.

2020, 14 January

Kempen boosts Client Solutions team with the appointment of Peter Ruesink

Kempen Capital Management (Kempen) has appointed Peter Ruesink as Fiduciary Manager/Client Director of the Client Solutions team as of 1 January. He will focus specifically on serving institutional fiduciary clients using his expertise on data science strategies. With this appointment, Kempen further specialises as a data driven organisation.

2020, 13 January

How Kempen integrates listed and non-listed real estate investment

The professionally managed real estate universe consists of listed companies and non-listed funds. One of the biggest challenges of investing in real estate that is part of listed companies or unlisted funds is the perception that one compares ‘apples to oranges’. How does Kempen level out these differences? We spoke with Todor Ristov portfolio manager real estate to see how Kempen is integrating listed and non-listed real estate and driving value for clients.

2020, 13 January

Asset Allocation Outlook January

Having again noted a gain in December, the MSCI global equity index closed 2019 with a positive return of no less than 28.1%. That makes 2019 the best year of the past two decades. Investors in general asset classes could basically do little wrong in 2019. All these asset classes, from government bonds to real estate, posted positive returns.

2020, 10 January

Kempen's Commentary

2019 was a wonderful year for investments. Each broad investment category generated a positive return. US stocks reached the highest returns of more than 30%, closely followed by European real estate. Despite low interest rates, bonds also realised positive yields. US corporate bonds were leading with 14%. But Japanese government bonds also realised a small positive result at zero interest rates. And even government bonds in the core countries of the euro zone, where 10-year interest rates are often negative, gained 4%.

2020, 10 January

Monthly Commentary

Iran and the USA have had no formal diplomatic relations since 1980. Before that point they could be considered something of allies (in fairness, the 1979 Iranian Revolution did represent a change to the status quo for Iran). This note is not going to try to guess too much about what happens in the world of global politics. Rather, we look to the markets as investors and think about what has happened to date to markets; what might be impacted if the situation escalates or deescalates and finally think about what this situation may represents over the long-term.

2020, 06 January

A flying start for the Infrastructure fund

The Kempen (Lux) Global Listed Infrastructure Fund was launched one year ago. The fund invests in listed infrastructure companies. In this article fund managers Thomas van der Meij and Jags Walia look back with satisfaction on the first six months of 2019: the fund outperformed its benchmark by 261 basis points (gross return for costs). ‘We shouldn’t celebrate too soon, but we seem to be doing things right.’

2019, 17 December

Global Impact Pool Quarterly

We are pleased to report on the third quarter of 2019 on Kempen’s Global Impact Pool in which we continued to deploy capital towards the Global Impact Pool’s mission, which is to make investments that positively contribute to solving global problems around the food, water and climate nexus and five Sustainable Development Goals.

2019, 16 December

Kempen European Private Equity Fund reaches maximum capacity with final close at € 192.5 million

Amsterdam, 16 December 2019. The final close of the Kempen European Private Equity Fund, the private equity fund managed by Kempen Capital Management (Kempen), took place on Friday 13 December 2019. The total committed capital amounts to € 192.5 million, which brings the fund to its maximum capacity.

2019, 13 December

Kempen's Commentary

For two weeks, no fewer than 25,000 people met in Madrid to discuss our climate. The fact that this climate conference eventually took place in Europe after Brazil and Chile had both cancelled, is symbolic of Europe’s pioneering role in this debate. Is this position an opportunity or a risk?

2019, 13 December

Monthly Commentary

In hindsight it was obvious, but then isn’t everything? The election results were in line with the polls, maybe a little more towards the Conservatives but not significantly. What is astonishing is where the Conservatives won. Former northern mining towns voted for a Conservative for the first time in their history. Redcar, home to the UK’s distressed steel industry, chose to vote for the party of landowners rather than party of workers; it is now to be known as Bluecar.

2019, 11 December

Dutch financials make significant progress with PCAF carbon accounting methodology

The number of Dutch banks, insurance companies and pension funds working on calculating the climate impact of their loans and investments is growing. Seventeen financials with a total assets under management of 2 trillion euros are now part of the Partnership for Carbon Accounting Financials (PCAF), which has developed a carbon accounting methodology to map the carbon emissions of loans and investments.