All IPE articles in October 2014 (Magazine)
View all stories from this issue.
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Opinion Pieces
Woody at work
Woody is the villain of the new book The US Pension Crisis – What We Need to Do Now to Save America’s Pensions, by Ronald Ryan. According to Ryan, Woody is the “pension pencil” or “the weapon of mass destruction in financial America”, used since the 1990s for accounting gimmicks that conceal the real financial situation of pension funds.
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Opinion Pieces
A stinging rebuke
The private pension product sector is “persistently the worst-performing retail services market of all throughout the European Union”, according to the European Commission, as cited in a new report.
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Features
Not quite a revolution
The introduction of a new accounting framework in the UK and Ireland could lead to much less upheaval in pensions accounting than some plan sponsors fear, discovers Stephen Bouvier
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Features
Post-crisis or pre-crisis?
History warns us that the next crisis is just around the corner. Arturo Bris outlines the shapes it is taking and what we can do to mitigate it
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Features
Pensions in the picture
Just three years after Europe’s pension fund representative bodies were successful in their proposal to create a separate occupational pensions stakeholder group within the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority (EIOPA) – under the previous CEIOPS committee of pension and insurance supervisors a single stakeholder group covered both sectors – there is now a proposal to merge the two stakeholder groups. Although this will have to be ratified by the European Parliament, here are a few points that might help those involved understand why this issue really matters.
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Features
Race for solutions picks up pace
Incumbent managers have a natural advantage with mature pension funds in the provision of solution-type services, finds Pádraig Floyd
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Country Report
Spain: A pessimistic outlook for pensions
Spanish workers can expect to receive detailed information from their employers about their retirement outlook, according to Carlo Svaluto Moreolo. Few think this will boost supplementary retirement savings at a time when the government is reducing tax incentives
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Features
Integrity matters
While they have been few in number, the various scandals at European pension funds have brought to light the need for clear and coherent codes of conduct for pension trustees and staff, writes Gail Moss
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Features
The high stakes of stakeholder group reform
Changes to the governance and funding structure of the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority (EIOPA) now seem inevitable, after it was adopted as one of the core policies for new European commissioner Jonathan Hill.
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Opinion Pieces
“Governance can serve as a stimulus to improve and nurture pension organisations”
Once a year, the US professional basketball league organises its all-star competition. Players from teams across the country are selected as the best in their respective positions. Could we have an all-star pension industry, uniting the best standards and practices under one roof?
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Features
Keeping it in the family
Jennifer Bollen asks why buyers of private equity secondaries tend to be owners of primary interests already, and finds the current hot market conditions explain some of the advantages
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Interviews
Experience, leveraged
Babson Capital immediately springs to mind for institutional investors around the world seeking global fixed-income managers, but that is a key goal for CEO Tom Finke. Having raised $5bn (€3.9bn) from European investors alone in 2013 it certainly looks well-positioned to one day be ranked among the market leaders.
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Features
Evergreen mandate takes root
Mark Mansley and Faith Ward of the UK’s Environment Agency Pension Fund tell Jonathan Williams about the scheme’s plans for an ‘evergreen’ sustainable equity mandate and discuss how investment management agreements of indefinite length will spread
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Features
How we run our money - Prudent and dynamic
Miguel Branco, deputy director of Banco de Portugal pension fund, tells Carlo Svaluto Moreolo about his fund’s investment and risk strategy
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Features
Diary of an Investor: A happy median
A couple of weeks ago, my old friend Pim came over to the Wasserdicht offices in Utrecht to tell me about his new proposition. I’ve known Pim for many years and he has pitched to me many times, although each pitch has been from a different company.
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Features
Divergence trades, depression trades
“It’s one of our big themes,” said Kathleen Hughes, head of European institutional sales at Goldman Sachs Asset Management, talking about central bank policy divergence over meet-the-press drinks in early September, four hours after European Central Bank president Mario Draghi had taken the deposit rate further into negative territory and announced plans to purchase covered bonds and asset-backed securities. The euro had a terrible day; Goldman Sachs had a pretty good one.
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Asset Class Reports
Dangerous liquidity
Following another summer of high-yield bond market volatility, Emma Cusworth asks whether ETFs are to blame for credit markets getting riskier
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Features
DC plans in search of credibility
Worldwide, diversity increasingly characterises defined contribution (DC) schemes. There are employee-managed plans in Hong Kong, Japan, the UK and the US. There are trustee-led plans in Australia, Brazil, Chile, continental Europe and South Africa. There are state-supervised DC plans in China, India, Malaysia and Singapore.
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Features
The ‘what’ and ‘why’ of costs
Controversies around pension funds’ asset management costs in various countries tell us something about the mood of the times, but they also suggest that changes are needed in the way pension boards select and justify their strategy choices to members and the wider world.
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Features
Focus Group: Contending with the ‘do-gooders’
Just over half of respondents polled for this month’s Focus Group said their fund has an overall ESG policy. Around the same number have an active engagement policy for corporate governance issues – and 21 have decided to exclude specific investment areas due to ESG considerations.
