In this podcast, Mikkel looks at an essential area of regulation in financial services that everyone should know about: Consumer Duty.
It came into effect in July last year, but many firms found they needed more time to prepare for it. In conversation with Mies Donohoe of JPES, Mikkel talks about what fund managers should be doing, particularly those in distribution or product development.
You can also listen to the first podcast with Mikkel in which he discusses the implications of Sustainability Disclosure Requirements for asset managers.
In the latest episode of the JPES Market Talk podcast, Miles Donohoe discusses the intricacies of regulation with Mikkel Bates, FE fundinfo’s Regulatory Lead. They explore the FCA’s Sustainability Disclosure Requirements (SDR) and its impact on sustainable financial products.
The study was based on 37 interviews with senior decision-makers at asset owners which control more than £2trn of AUM.
If you would like to know more about the research findings or purchase a copy of the report, please contact matt.rogers@jpespartners.com
In the first part of Miles Donohoe’s conversation about private markets with Citywire alternative correspondent and freelance journalist, Selin Bucak, they discuss the findings of the recent JPES Investment Communications Trends Report, and Selin gives some tips on what private markets managers can do to get the ear of a journalist.
In the second part of their conversation, they look at the drivers and the outlook for asset managers’ product push towards intermediary and retail investors.
Duncan Lamb speaks to Adam Kirby of economic location analysis model, Evaluate|Locate in a conversation which encompasses the uneven impact of recession on UK cities, why investors and businesses need to take a more granular interest in the economic identity of locations, and how this could influence where you can get a Gregg’s sausage roll…
In the second of our Urban Capital podcast series, the author of Transport for Humans: Are We nearly There Yet? considers how the process of moving people in, out and around urban environments will evolve following the pandemic and what opportunities this may create.
In the first of our Urban Capital podcast series, Dr Walter Boettcher – Head of Research and Forecasting at international property consultants, Colliers – talks about how cities are emerging from the pandemic and what the future holds for them.
In a wide-ranging conversation with Duncan Lamb, Walter reflects on the seemingly unstoppable trend towards urbanisation, his own experience as a private landlord and why the asset classification ‘Other’ may be where investor value can be found.
The recent news that UK real estate firm Cromwell Property Group and Finnish real asset manager Dasos Capital have joined to launch a pan-European wooden building property fund could prove to be a significant milestone for adoption of a construction method which is seen as answer to many of property development’s sustainability challenges.
Trees ingest carbon while they grow and a primary source of this are the decayed limbs of dead trees. Once a forest is mature, it essentially sustains itself. Suffice to say, the sourcing, development and lifespan of wooden buildings is much, much closer to carbon neutrality than steel or concrete.
In the UK, between 15%-30% of new homes built annually use timber frame construction. This captures more than 1m tonnes of CO2 a year. Sustainability experts are now excited about the potential scale of carbon benefit if this is extended to the commercial real estate sector.
And scale is not a problem for wooden buildings – or more accurately, cross-laminated timber (CLT) – which layers strips of wood to create an extremely strong and, perhaps surprisingly, very fire-resistant material.
The trend is spreading worldwide: at 29-storeys, the playfully named, WoHo tower, designed by the Norwegian firm Mad Architects, will be one of the tallest wooden buildings in Europe, rising 98m over central Berlin (pictured above). Over in Japan, by 2024, Sumitomo Group hopes to use CLT to build a 70-storey wood skyscraper in Tokyo.
The concept is also being looked at in the UK. Architectural practice, PLP, has produced conceptual proposals for a 1m sq ft mixed-use tower and mid-rise terraces within the Barbican complex in central London that would rise to around 1,000 ft.
Of course, the resilience of tall buildings remains a sensitive subject in the UK following the Grenfell Tower fire of 2017. In what has been an unfortunate reaction, the Government has mooted proposals to restrict the height of wood-based buildings to just 36 feet tall. This might be understandable in the immediate aftermath of the Grenfell tragedy but is actually contrary to the facts about CLT. When exposed to fire, it chars and actually becomes stronger – unlike steel which warps and loses its tensile strength.
The sustainability benefits of creating a virtuous construction circle are clear and it would be a missed opportunity – from both a sustainability and safety perspective – if this mode of creating buildings was not more widely embraced.
