All articles by David White – Page 8
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Features
A rose by any other name...
What’s in a name? The search for a new term for ‘pensions’ that might be less off-putting for scheme members is an endeavour without real appeal to those managing pension plans. The predicament is one of coming up with something that is much worse than what we have or that ...
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Features
Anatomy of satisfaction
Fonchim, the €4.5bn industrywide pension fund for Italy’s chemical and pharmaceutical industry workers, has been one of the most successful of the new complementary pension funds at recruiting members. The fund has attracted 116,000 members, 60% of its potential membership, since it was launched in 1999. This is far higher ...
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Features
Without a ripple
One of the largest pension funds for professionals in the Netherlands, the Doctors Pensions Fund Services (DPFS), recently outsourced the management of its assets from its in-house investment management team to external asset managers. The transfer which involved the movement of €11bn of DPFS assets, was probably the largest transition ...
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Features
Still in good heart
This is the time of year when Off The Record can invite its readers to take a broad look at what has happened, and what is happening in the world of pensions management and to hazard some guesses about what is likely to happen in 2006 and beyond. Of course, ...
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Features
Extending the home market
Erste-Sparinvest KAG, the investment management arm of Erste Bank and the Austrian savings banks, is Austria’s second largest investment manager, and third largest manager of institutional assets. Assets under management currently totalling €27bn are managed in retail mutual funds and large-scale institutional funds. Erste-Sparinvest also manages close on €2bn in ...
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Features
Block trading: horses for courses
One component of transition management that has grown in importance is block trading. As its name implies, this involves the trading of large blocks of shares between institutions. Historically, the problem with block trading is that there is no wholesale market for shares. Large institutional investors trade in the same ...
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Features
Home is where the parent is
SEB Asset Management (SEB AM) threw a party for its staff earlier this year. The reason for the celebration was that the bi-annual Prospera survey had ranked SEB AM first among the 30 asset managers operating in Sweden. This put them ahead of international titans such as Goldman Sachs JP ...
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Features
Long life complications
The cost of any promise to provide someone with an annual pension for life depends on how long that person lives. Improvements in mortality have meant that people are living far longer than was anticipated. In the past 40 years, life expectancy at age 65 has increased on average by ...
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Features
Difficult to apply
Behavioural finance achieved real respectability three years ago when Daniel Kahneman won the Nobel Prize for his work in this area. Kahneman and his colleague Amos Tversky are best known for their work on Prospect Theory. A simple rendering of this theory would be that people have an irrational tendency ...
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News
Italy’s Previcooper looking for asset managers
ITALY - Previcooper, the €70m complementary pension fund for employees of Italy’s distribution cooperatives, is looking for at least three asset managers.
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News
Report denies UK pensions crisis
UK - Britain does not face a pensions crisis, nor does it have a savings gap that needs closing, a business-led think tank has said.
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News
Report calls for better pensions information
ITALY - Public acceptance of unpopular pension reform depends on better information, according to an Italian research study.
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News
Italian pension funds agree merger
ITALY – Fonchim, Italy's industry-wide chemical and pharmaceutical industry pension fund, is acquiring the Bayer Italia pension fund (Fpbi), the Italian unit of the German chemical firm Bayer.
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News
Alecta shows red card to traffic light
SWEDEN -- Sweden’s new financial regulatory ‘traffic light’ system could destabilise the fixed income market if it is not amended, according to Alecta, the largest occupational pension company in the Nordic region, with €37bn assets under management.
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News
Swedish PPM may face tightening
SWEDEN - The Swedish premium pension system (PPM) should be tightened up, with fewer asset managers and lower management fees, according to proposals from the government appointed Premium Pension Committee.
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Features
Investing with the grain
Oil is today’s news. Gold is always news. But what about wheat? Wheat is one of the agricultural commodities, the Cinderella sector of commodities. While energy and metals have attracted the attention of investors, agriculture - a so-called ‘soft’ commodity - has often been overlooked. Yet agricultural commodities have their ...
