All IPE articles in December 2005 (Magazine) – Page 3
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Features
Confidence and diversity builds portfolio that protects
Given its innovative and efficient approach to building its portfolios, it’s no wonder Inarcassa continues to be one of Italy’s leading pension funds and has won the IPE Award 2005 for portfolio construction. The objective behind the €3bn self-employed engineers’ and architects’ fund is generating maximum returns with minimum risk, ...
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Features
Spain catches PE fever
Compared with the rest of Europe, Spain’s involvement with private equity has soared over the past year or two. Last year, according to the European Venture Capital Association. private equity investment equalled 0.246% of the country’s gross domestic product, placing it fifth in the European rankings, ahead of countries such ...
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Features
Structured CDOs: keeping track of the overlap?
The growth of structured credit markets in Europe and across the world seems pretty much unstoppable. According to the British Banking Association, at the end of 2003 the global market for credit derivatives (excluding asset swaps) accounted for $3.5 trn (e2.9trn) and could reach $8.2 trn by 2006. Collateralised debt ...
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Features
The poisoned chalice?
Germany’s got a new minister responsible for pensions – which is interesting for two reasons. First is the scale of the problem, then there is the minister himself. Out of the turmoil of the election and the horse-trading behind the grand coalition, the SPD’s Franz Muentefering has emerged in the ...
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Features
Embracing the challenge of a changing pensions system
It will come as no real surprise to see Barclays walk away again with IPE’s Country Award for the United Kingdom. Last year, it won for its innovative ‘afterwork’ concept, a hybrid defined benefit and defined contribution scheme. This year, its success is thanks to its excellent stakeholder engagement policy. ...
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Features
More challenges to come
If they haven’t already, many pension fund investment managers will shortly be considering how to position their funds to meet the challenges of the new year and it certainly looks as though the new year will produce just as many challenges as this year has. It does not look like ...
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Features
Portfolio managed to meet global challenges
An important component in creating long-term competitive returns for life insurance savers is to set up an efficient portfolio construction process. In particular, effective portfolio management can best equip a fund to meet global challenges such as the EU occupational pensions directive and the new traffic light model being used ...
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Features
Still waiting for changes
The source of the major challenge for Portuguese pension funds is clear: it’s the state. But not in the way seen elsewhere in Europe, where governments place investment and other restrictions on pension funds. Rather it’s its all-encompassing presence in the pensions arena and the resulting universally held belief this ...
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Features
Chasing new rainbows?
In the last two years, investment banks have truly woken up to the fact that there is a vacuum in the investment product range offered to pension funds. Many houses have set up dedicated pensions groups, and all of them are vying for new business. Some are finding it harder ...
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Features
Inaccessible class opens up
Commodities may be latecomers to the diversification game, but market commentators suggest they are winning an increasing share of institutional investors’ portfolios. Changes in the commodities market - driven largely by increasing demands from the booming Chinese and Indian manufacturing industries - have increased demand for commodities, and made them ...
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Features
Commission clawback
With cost cutting a priority for most pension funds, providers of commission recapture programmes should have no trouble persuading funds to sign up. After all, commission recapture gives investors a systematic way of recouping some of the brokerage commission they pay. But not all pension clients make use of it, ...
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Features
Streamlined collection system leads where others wait
A reform of the way in which tax and insurance is deducted from employees’ salaries in the Netherlands has prompted the Dutch pension fund Pensioenfonds Horeca & Catering (PH&C) to introduce procedural and technological changes for calculating and collecting employer contributions. This project has earned the fund this year’s themed ...
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Features
Comfort from derivatives
IPE asked three pension funds in three countries – Denmark, the Netherlands and Switzerland – the same question: ‘Do derivatives perform a useful function in pension fund portfolios or are too costly, complicated and risky?’ Here are their answers: Hasser Jørgensen, chief investment officer at Denmark’s PFA Pension which ...
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Features
Coming to terms with derivatives
Remember 1995? Only 10 years ago or so, most investment managers still felt pretty uncomfortable with derivatives. Derivative traders were an exotic species using Greek symbols and a jargon nobody could understand. No surprise, pension funds hardly used these instruments, or even avoided them in principle. What is a derivative? ...
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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 ...
