All Features articles – Page 103
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Features
Soft and hard factors
Daily, at thousands of pension funds, judgements are formed on asset managers. Those managers may largely be hired and fired on the basis of hard numbers, but relationships are assessed (and sustained through hard times or otherwise curtailed) on the basis of a combination of ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ factors. Tough economic and market conditions increase the importance of those factors. But which ones do pension funds pay closest attention to?
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Features
Squeezing out the last drops
Brendan Maton assesses the favourability of tax-transparent Dublin and Luxembourg pooled funds as a way to avoid being ensnared by US withholding tax
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Features
The Draghi put is no turning point for the euro
As I write on 13 September, it’s been a good week for europhiles. On 6 September,Mario Draghi unveiled the ECB’s plan for Outright Monetary Transactions (OMT). The German Constitutional Court ratified the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) on 12 September. And the Dutch electorate favoured two pro-euro parties.
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Features
Diary of an Investor: Feed the world
It is early September and there’s a chill in the air but the sun is shining. It seems that summer has come late in the Netherlands.
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Features
No short or decisive war
The essayist Robert Wilson Lynd wrote that “belief in the possibility of a short decisive war appears to be one of the most ancient and dangerous of human illusions”. The twentieth century conclusively laid to rest the notion that wars between nations would end with the symbolic exchange of border provinces or notional reparations. The economic consequences of the First World War were profound and long lasting, just as the Second World War shaped politics in ways we still see today.
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Features
Dealing with the financial crisis
The vast majority of sovereign debt will end in effective default – at least that is according to Philippa ‘Pippa’ Malmgren, president of Principalis Asset Management.
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Features
Focus Group: A crisis of confidence and trust
Half of the respondents to this month’s Off The Record survey thought that quantitative easing (QE) and outright monetary transactions (OMT) were effective as emergency monetary policy measures
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Features
EFRP seeks priority in insolvency cases
Responding to the European Commission’s White Paper on Pensions from February late last month, the European Federation for Retirement Provision (EFRP) has called for the proposed review of the IORP Directive to grant pension funds greater security in the instance of sponsor insolvency.
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Features
If the euro breaks up
Declan O’Sullivan and Lindsay Trapp outline some of the operational challenges that fund managers could face in the event of a break-up of the single currency
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Features
Profits with purpose are still an uphill battle
Not all profits are born equal. This simple view was put forward by Towers Watson’s global head of investment content Roger Urwin as he unveiled the consultancy’s latest research project, Telos, conducted in conjunction with Oxford University.
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Features
Pensions Accounting: A man on the moon? Easy
IFRIC Draft Interpretation D9, Employee Benefit Plans with a Promised Return on Contributions or Notional Contributions, refuses to die
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Features
Diversification 2.0
With asset class correlations no longer following their historic norms, a new form of diversification focused on risk is emerging, according to Jim McCaughan and Amin Rajan
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Features
Kay seeks corporate governance ‘settlement’
John Kay’s long-awaited final report on long-term decision making within the UK’s equity market did not offer many surprises. Many of the proposals had already been hinted at in February’s interim report, such as the abolition of quarterly reporting to aid companies in more long-term thinking.
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Features
Bearing the brunt of margin calls
Earlier this year, the industry cheered as Brussels granted pension funds a temporary exemption from the European Market Infrastructure Regulation (EMIR). Yet concerns over the impact of the regulation on funds persist, reprieve notwithstanding.
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Features
Steadying the ship
Andrew Waring of the UK Merchant Navy Officers Pension Fund tells Nina Röhrbein how the 2008 financial crisis led to a fiduciary management structure
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Features
Making a virtue out of necessity
While investors have grown weary of new risks, they are unwilling to forego a bargain when they see it, according to Jim McCaughan and Amin Rajan
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Features
Who turned out the lights?
Dark liquidity, which started as a way to hide big trades,now mostly offers liquidity in bitty, small packages. But Martin Steward finds signs that the pendulum is swinging back again
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Features
Lost horizons
The growing gap between trading and investing is changing the face of equity markets, argues Per Lovén
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Features
The long haul
Speaking a little over 200 days into his tenure as EFRP secretary general, Matti Leppälä was a busy man. His secretariat was working on its response to the quantitative impact study of EIOPA (the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority) on the holistic balance sheet proposal, and he was looking forward to the Brussels close season when the city’s politicians, officials and interest groups head for Europe’s holiday spots.
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Features
Speed is good
Richard Olsen argues that, far from slowing down, transaction volumes need to increase by a factor of thousands, and that pension funds should benefit from its uncorrelated alpha
