Asset Allocation – Page 238
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Features
Industriens trims strategy with hedges
Industriens Pensions’ invested portfolio, which is expected to grow significantly over the next few years as a result of increasing contribution payments, consists of a broad range of asset types, of which shares – according to the investment framework drawn up by the board – may constitute between 25 and ...
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Managing the investment portfolio
Senior managers at some of Europe’s top pension funds agree on one thing: that they are investing for the long term, though they differ on how to achieve their aims in terms of how they manage their funds, allocate assets and monitor their absolute returns. The executives were speaking at ...
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Features
Support for launch of new wide-ranging pension pac
The judges said that the establishment of the TotalFinaElf fund must have been an achievement in itself and praised its use of “good tools and periodicity in the communication process”. The staff at TotalFinaElf’s new retirement savings and pension fund department were naturally delighted to learn they had won the ...
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Features
Taking the luck out of pooling
The major employee benefits networks are reporting their busiest periods for new business for some time. The existing total market of around 2,200 pools is likely to expand by 8% this year and there is more in the pipeline. This change in fortunes is not completely accidental. Behind the numbers ...
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Features
MetallRente's well-forged plan
MetallRente, the joint venture between the metal employers’ association (Gesamtmetall) and the metalworkers’ union (IG Metall) has been heralded as one of the most innovative occupational pension funds to come out of the Riester pension reforms. At the beginning of September the organisation had more than 500 companies under contract ...
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Features
Norway's place for money
The institutional market in Norway is a notoriously difficult market for asset managers to enter. There are three broad reasons for this. The first is that the is market controlled by a handful of large players. The second is that the pension fund business is too fragmented to be lucrative ...
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Variety of strategies
The HSBC Asian Equity Fund under HSBC’s SICAV Global Investment Fund series currently has $140m under management, with its Asia Equity OEIC counterpart running £40m. The month of October saw the fund return positive results of 5.47% after a fairly negative year, with the fund’s year-to-date returns currently sitting at ...
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Features
Outsourcing of e60bn mooted
Concerns about the medium term solvency of the Spanish social security system have been actively discussed not only in Spain but also in Brussels. At the end of last year the European Commission said that the Spanish government was not providing enough detailed information regarding the long term sustainability of ...
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Features
Nightmare on ALM street
American defined benefit (DB) pension funds may become the next nightmare for US corporations. David Blitzer, chairman of Standard & Poor’s index committee, predicts that pension contributions will replace stock options as the big corporate accounting issue next year. The almost three year severe stock market downturn has deeply damaged ...
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Features
Out of one comparto and into another
One sign that the new occupational DC plans in Italy are shifting into a higher gear is the beginning of a move from monocomparto schemes, which offer members a single line of investment – usually a balanced portfolio – to multicomparto schemes that offer a choice of investments. Investment choice ...
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Benign Belgian flexibility
Market volatility has not precipitated any sharp changes of direction among Belgian pension funds, according to Hervé Noël the head of portfolio management at Tractebel Pension Funds in Brussels. Furthermore, the regulator, the Office de Controle des Assurances/Controledienst voor Verzekeringen (OCA/CDV) is using a light hand on the tiller. “Until ...
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Features
Blown off course
Professionals in the Spanish pensions market will remember this month as the end of a long process during which Spanish companies were forced, by law, to externalise their pension reserves by establishing a pension fund or an insurance contract. Previous deadlines regarding this outsourcing were postponed due to disagreements among ...
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Features
Managing disability costs in Canada
Like many jurisdictions around the world, Canada is experiencing significant increases in benefit costs, notably medical and disability costs. Several factors contribute to disability cost increases but there are three major factors common to many countries – the ageing work force, stress and depression, and a strained healthcare system. For ...
