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This paper presents empirical evidence on the determinants of swap spreads in Finland using four years of data. Spreads exhibit a significant negative relationship with the amount of fixed rate deposits with banks, which reflects the importance of banks in the Finnish capital markets. Spreads are positively linked to business cycle and market risk factors such as the slope of the yield curve and the volatility of interest rates. The influence of hedging costs has become increasingly important over time, especially in longer dated swaps. A relationship is also observed between swap spreads and the external value of the currency.

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We examine the realized performance of alternative beta strategies using a database of returns since 2008. Despite diversified portfolios of risk premia strategies offered by global investment banks achieving satisfactory Sharpe ratios of 0.80–1.07 during the decade to 2017, up to two thirds of the performance can be explained by exposure to traditional benchmarks. Furthermore, the outcomes are very sensitive to the estimated all-in fees incurred by investors. We find no evidence of positive alpha in the aggregate industry returns, and document a pattern of time-varying, asymmetric, and statistically significant betas to global equities and bonds. Our results suggest that the poor performance of the strategies in 2018–20 was not an aberration, but rather a continuation of patterns already present in earlier data. The findings are representative of the wider risk premia industry, as returns of managed alternative risk premia funds and those of diversified investment bank strategy portfolios appear closely aligned.