All IPE articles in December 2002 (Magazine)
View all stories from this issue.
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Features
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
Search for safer processes
Although investment managers and pension funds previously largely ignored derivatives, recent events in the market are causing them to look at them again. Futures, options and swaps can provide useful instruments to either gain or hedge exposures to help meet performance targets or to manage risks. But derivatives can be ...
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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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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
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
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
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
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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Features
TotalFinaElf harmonises plans
TotalFinaElf employs what it calls a harmonised package of supplementary pensions and savings plans. The group has shown a willingness to put in place new common personnel administration procedures within group companies designed to facilitate mobility. The approach fits in with the new legal framework for long and short-term savings ...
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Features
Hands-off ownership
This month’s Off The Record takes a look at the subject of shareholder activism and the extent to which pension funds should get involved in the affairs of the companies in which they invest. European pension funds hold a significant share of corporate assets. Yet in general they take little ...
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Features
Global players making inroads
When the Second Swedish National Pension Fund (AP2) appointed State Street to provide global investment services for its $14bn of assets under management in June this year, the move highlighted a disturbing trend for the Nordic region’s domestic global custodians. Are the region’s larger pension funds players and insurance companies ...
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Features
Thoroughly 'modern' funds reaps rewards for the second time
What the judges said: “They are a serious player and are developing their strategy. In particular they have developed their reporting system in co-operation with an outside specialist and it is very modern by Finnish standards, for example providing for analysis of performance attribution. Their risk management system is also ...
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Features
Signal for other funds to take same steps
The Basel-based Novartis Pension Fund, the pension scheme of pharmaceuticals and health-care group Novartis, believes it was the novel idea to ‘monetise’ its real estate portfolios that led the IPE Awards judges to pick it as country group investment strategy winner for Switzerland. One judge commended it on the grounds ...
