Asset Allocation – Page 190
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Special Report
Where does the buck stop?
Is there an optimal model of pension fund governance? If so, how should it be applied to Europe’s occupational pension plans? These were the key questions at a discussion on pension fund governance organised by pension fund consultants Akkermans Stroobants & Partners in Antwerp recently, attended by pension fund managers, ...
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Features
Bullish on commodities
IPE asked three pension funds in three countries – the Netherlands, Portugal and Switzerland – the same question: ‘Do you agree with investment guru Jim Rogers that commodities are the only pure bull market in the world?’ Here are their answers: Vera Kupper Staub, CIO of Pensionskasse der Stadt ...
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Features
BVK spreads its wings
Germany’s biggest pension provider, the multi-employer Bayerische VersorgungsKkammer, is about to become bigger. It is to add another occupational group – the psychologists – to the 12 already covered. “This is a brand new arrangement with just 1,000 members to start with, so for reasons of economy of operations, they ...
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Features
The 'undramatising' chairman
Sigbjørn Johnsen says that when he was approached to head a commission intended to coax a consensus on pension reform from Norway’s political parties he saw it as “quite a challenge”, sidestepping phrases like ‘poison chalice’ and ‘herding cats’. “During the 1990s there had been a number of reports on ...
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Features
Who's for commodities
Well, what is an investment in commodities? Why does it seem to be flavour of the month? Certainly, if it is an investment in say the Goldman Sachs Commodities Index it is not necessarily an investment in commodity Prices. When looking at a commodity index investment one must look at ...
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Features
Search for consensus
Norway’s parliament hopes to reach a consensus on the main principles of a reform of the pension system by 19 May. The discussions follow the release of a government white paper in December which was based on the findings of a commission chaired by former finance minister Sigbjørn Johnsen that ...
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Features
Right at the core
The number of European pension funds employing core satellite strategies has grown steadily. Research suggests that only 5% of pension funds were using core-satellite strategies in 1995. This had risen to 15% in 2000 and is likely to have more than doubled since the. The attraction of core satellite is ...
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Features
There is no pensions crisis - official
There is no pensions crisis. That is the assertion of new VB chairman Benne van Popta. “New schemes are still being established. And it’s very questionable that youngsters aren’t interested in solidarity and collectivity. A recent survey among 3,000 young people has shown that three-quarters of them want to save ...
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Features
Marketplace of discontents
As wary German investors emerge from the double-trauma of mistimed investments and stockmarket turmoil and decide how to move forward when their traditional haven of fixed income lies barren with yields at record lows, a well-meaning regulator is doing more harm than good. As in other walks of life, being ...
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Features
Lessons for Europe
In 1981 Chile adopted a new pension system that has set a controversial pattern around the world. Unlike traditional systems, benefits are financed by investment accounts owned by workers. Chileans are sensitive about the starting point of their system, under Pinochet. But they do not worry about whether their system ...
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Features
Fund with know-how
The way corporate pension funds are managed will change with changes in the corporations that sponsor them. Few organisations demonstrate this better than DSM Pensions Services (DPS), the in-house organisation that manages the Dutch pension funds of the Dutch firm DSM, the former Dutch state mines. The company was once ...
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Features
Risk, return and pension funds
When it comes to economic policy, there is much to criticise about the centre-left government of German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder. Despite an unemployment rate not seen since the 1930s – namely around 5m – Schröder’s government is still not doing enough to make Germany’s labour market more flexible. Schröder’s government ...
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Features
Interest rate risk matching for pension funds
New regulations such as IFRS require pension funds to bring their interest-rate risk more in line with the interest-rate risk of their liabilities. This usually means that the duration of the fixed-income portfolio needs to be extended or the allocation to fixed-income investments increased. The latter would mean that there ...
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Features
Multinationals try to hold the line
Multinational companies based in the Netherlands are re-evaluating how much control they need to impose on their different pension plans around the world in light of ballooning costs and liabilities. But despite this increasingly close attention to their international liabilities and scheme designs – and the impact this is having ...
