Study Conducted at ZEW Receives BlackRock Research Award 2011

The study "International Diversification Benefits with Foreign

Exchange Investment Styles" developed at the Centre for European

Economic Research (ZEW) has received the BlackRock Research Award 2011

awarded by the Institute of Global Finance (IGF) at the University of

New South Wales. The authors of the paper, Tim-Alexander Kroencke,

Prof. Dr. Felix Schindler and Dr. Andreas Schrimpf, received the award

during the 24th Australasian Finance and Banking Conference in Sydney.

Their awarded paper critically deals with the diversification options

presented to investors by adding currency strategies in an

international mixed-asset portfolio. The research findings show that

especially the application of carry trade strategies, but also of

momentum and value strategies holds great diversification potentials

for currencies that are statistically as well as economically highly

significant. Taking investment restrictions and transaction costs as

well as out-of-sample analyses into account, the findings proof to be

solid.