All articles by Blake Evans-Pritchard

  • Features

    UCITS denied pensions access

    July 2006 (Magazine)

    There has been some progress made recently towards prising open the market for UCITS funds - repeatedly touted by the European Commission (EC) as one of the key investment vehicles for retirement savings - but for many market participants things have not gone far enough. Those advocating a tighter linkage ...

  • Features

    Portability plan in limbo

    April 2006 (Magazine)

    Despite the commission’s prevailing optimism that last-minute tweaks would have saved its pensions portability proposal from sinking beneath a quagmire of inter-governmental wrangling, those that are now handling the dossier say that it is looking decidedly more troublesome than they first allowed for. For one thing, Austria, which currently has ...

  • Features

    Shareholders become active

    March 2006 (Magazine)

    Ever since the financial scandals of Enron and WorldCom that rocked the US, and more recently Parmalat in Europe, there has been a growing awareness among fund managers that they should be more actively involved in the running of the companies that they invest in. On 10 January, the European ...

  • Features

    Mission impossible?

    February 2006 (Magazine)

    Advocates of the so-called 26th regime structure for pan-European pension structure have been seeking to clarify its core benefits in the face of heightened sceptism from the European Commission and market participants. In December, the European Financial Services Round Table (EFR), one of the biggest voices calling for pan-European Pension ...

  • Features

    Too open and too loose?

    January 2006 (Magazine)

    An argument between Age, the older people’s platform, and the European Commission is simmering over how effective the EU’s peer review system is, just as the EU’s executive body gets ready to publish a series of non-binding suggestions for how member states can step up pension reforms. Following the submission ...

  • Features

    EU support needed for 'new' Europe

    December 2005 (Magazine)

    Much more co-ordinated action is needed at EU level to speed up pension reforms in the new member states, which are likely to suffer from an even greater demographic imbalance than “old” Europe, a conference in Brussels heard on November 14. The new member states were also told how they ...

  • Features

    Early retirement trend slows

    December 2005 (Magazine)

    Europe seems to be slowly inching away from its early retirement tendencies, according to the latest data on pensions expenditure issued by Eurostat, the EU’s statistical bureau. The release of this data coincides with the publication of a study by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which calls ...

  • Features

    Belgium sets IORP January deadline

    December 2005 (Magazine)

  • News

    New EU states warned off World Bank model

    2005-11-16T03:10:00Z

    EUROPE - New European Union member states have been warned about adopting the so-called World Bank pensions model.

  • News

    Belgium to submit IORP law in January

    2005-11-10T03:55:00Z

    BELGIUM - Belgian financial supervisors will present the final version of a new law for implementing the EU directive on occupational pensions in the first week of January.

  • Features

    Are you listening?

    November 2005 (Magazine)

    Less than half of all EU member states were able to meet the 23 September deadline for telling the Commission that they had been able to fully implement the Institutions for Occupational Provision’s (IORP) directive, but many in the industry say this should not be a cause for concern. Previously, ...

  • Features

    Belgium raises age

    November 2005 (Magazine)

  • News

    New pensions portability plan facing criticism

    2005-10-21T03:23:00Z

    EUROPE – The European Commission’s new pensions portability proposal – officially unveiled today - has come in from criticism from several quarters.

  • News

    PAYG schemes exempt from portability directive

    2005-10-19T04:00:00Z

    EUROPE – Pay-as-you-go and book reserve schemes are set to be exempt from the European Commission’s proposed directive on pensions portability.

  • News

    Belgium defies unions and raises retirement age

    2005-10-12T03:48:00Z

    BELGIUM - Belgium has decided to increase the minimum age for retirement from 58 to 60, in line with recommendations from the European Commission – despite trade union concern.

  • News

    Belgian unions strike over retirement age

    2005-10-10T03:29:00Z

    BELGIUM - One of Belgium's largest trade unions caused chaos in the nation’s capital on Friday by striking over government plans to push back the retirement age from 58 to 60, as a way of easing the pension burden in the country.

  • Features

    Closer pensions dialogues

    October 2005 (Magazine)

  • News

    Swiss in pension fact-finding trip to Brussels

    2005-09-20T03:30:00Z

    SWITZERLAND - In recognition of growing EU involvement in pensions, Swiss-based think-tank Innovation Zweite Säule (IZS) has decided to turn its attention to Brussels.

  • Features

    A matter of when, not if

    September 2005 (Magazine)