Asset Allocation – Page 215
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Features
Widening perspectives
French asset managers are in no doubt about what will be the most important event in institutional asset management in France this year – the eagerly-awaited award of mandates by the Fonds de Reserve Pour Les Retraites (FRR), the country’s new pension reserve fund. The final selection of managers for ...
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Re-engineering of plans under way
How is it possible to cut pension costs yet at the same time to remain attractive to employees? This is the conundrum faced by American employers. There is no ‘sure’ answer. What is certain is that the great majority of US pension fund sponsors are changing their benefit strategy. According ...
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Features
Simplification, protection and uncertainty
Last year was a year of consultation in the UK. As part of the government’s strategy to encourage retirement savings and restore confidence in pensions in the UK, both the Inland Revenue and the Department for Work & Pensions (DWP) are undertaking simplification reviews. The Revenue published in the autumn ...
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Features
Setting the standard
ATP stands for supplementary labour market pension scheme in Danish and that’s exactly what it set out to provide 40 years ago this year. It started out firmly in the second pillar by providing benefits for those in employment, with others, such as the unemployed, excluded, explains Bjarne Graven Larsen, ...
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Industriens is poised to take advantage of the upturn
The Copenhagen-based Industriens Pensions has an impeccable background as a labour-market fund. Formed just over a decade ago, in a pioneering joint venture move by DI, the Confederation of Danish Industry on the employer side and by CO, the central grouping of trade unions, it covers employees in 8,500 businesses ...
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Features
Key area of fund focus
Managing risk has shot to the top of the agenda for most pension funds this decade. While some capital erosion was unavoidable in the years of tumbling market values, trustees are demanding that everything be done to see that funds are better prepared the next time stocks take a dive. ...
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Features
Sectors have arrived
European institutions have little choice but to invest in European equities, be it via a domestic or foreign equity allocation, structured as a euro or pan-European mandate, or the European element of a global mandate. Four years after the birth of the euro, the means by which institutions achieve European ...
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Features
JOP goes back to the drawing board
At the Juristernes & Okonomernes Pension Fund (JØP) the search for alpha is on. The DKr21bn professional fund for lawyers and economists is undergoing an extensive restructuring. A full review is in hand, says Henrik Franck, investment director, who joined the fund from BankInvest last year. “Not only is the ...
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Features
Getting the best from custodians
Has your custodian ever lost any of your assets? Probably not. Should you worry about such risks? Surely yes. But how much should pension fund directors get involved in custody issues? In fact, there are normally no major problems that would require the attention of pension fund boards. Custody seems ...
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Features
British miss gravy train
The Parliamentary Contributory Pension Fund (PCPF) was first introduced to provide pension benefits for Members of Parliament (MPs) in 1965. The PCPF is a funded scheme which invests contributions from the exchequer and members. The Parliamentary Contributory Pension Fund (PCPF) has come in for considerable criticism, largely on account of ...
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Features
More optimistic than cautious
The outlook for US equities for the coming year is positive. According to Darrell Riley, vice president of T Rowe Price in Baltimore, “the consensus is that S&P index will increase by between 5 and 10% by the end of the year.” He adds: “what is priced into the market ...
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Features
Consumers hold the key
After three years of significant underperformance, Euro-zone equity markets outperformed the US, UK and Japan markets in 2003 as investors switched out of bonds and back into equities. The question is whether this is likely to continue in 2004. Some analysts suspect that the economic and financial recovery expected this ...
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Features
Time to be more creative
The defining moment of 2003 for the Irish fund management industry was the decision by UK insurance giant Aviva to reprieve its Dublin based asset management arm, Hibernian Investment Managers, Ireland’s fourth largest asset manager Aviva had initially considered closing down Hibernian and merging its operations with its London-based asset ...
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Features
Dedicated follower of market trends
When mad cow disease was discovered in Washington state last December, cattle futures collapsed. However, the US dollar also continued its downward slide. As a result, the Mulvaney Capital Management Global Diversified programme, which invests in a mixture of commodities and financials, ended the month 5.35% up. Managed futures is ...
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Features
Drift from equities in mature markets
The head of investment at consultants Watson Wyatt, Roger Urwin, says there is a gradual move to lower equity allocations in mature pension countries. “In countries with maturing pension funds there seems to be a gradual move to lower equity allocations,” says Urwin, global head of the consulting firm’s investment ...
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Features
Dutch pension reforms
As well as trying to mind-read Central Bankers, poring over economic statistics and keeping a keen watch on world events, investors also need to be more than up-to-date with all sorts of rules and regulations, dull though they may be. In a recent piece of careful and thorough research from ...
