44% believe Trump administration represents the biggest global risk in 2017

The 2017 Global Pension Assets Study covers 22 major pension markets (the P22), which total USD 36,435 billion in pension assets and account for 62.0% of the GDP of these economies. China, Finland and Italy were added to this year's study. A deeper analysis was performed for seven of these markets (Australia, Canada, Japan, Netherlands, Switzerland, UK and US)...

Macro optimism is surging, with 23% of investors saying they expect a “boom” (above trend growth and inflation) compared to 1% one year ago. Meanwhile, 43% said they expect “secular stagnation” (below trend growth and inflation), down sharply from 88% one year ago...

Large institutional investors are set to put cash to work in 2017, a BlackRock survey has found. One in four (25%) institutions surveyed intend to decrease their cash allocations during the year, nearly twice as many as those who plan to increase their cash holdings (13%).

The latest Quarterly Deal Performance Monitor (QDPM) from Willis Towers Watson suggests a significant slowing of deal volumes in the fourth quarter of the year, however, those that did close were high performing and showed an outperformance of 0.4pp over the index*. On an YTD basis, acquirers have outperformed the index by 5.4pp.