All Features articles – Page 103
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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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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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FeaturesGo with the flows
Dividends really do pay off in emerging markets. Martin Steward asks why, and what the theories tell us about how far investors should tilt towards higher yields.
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Features
A long road to a new form of lending
In recent years, a number of asset managers have touted infrastructure’s profile as an asset class. They point out that infrastructure is largely uncorrelated with other asset classes, not to mention that it matches institutional investors’ long-term liabilities perfectly.
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Features
Investing in solar and student loans
Nina Röhrbein spoke with Hans Wilhelm Korfmacher, managing director at WPV about the pension fund’s highly diversified investment strategy.
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Features
Just who can you trust?
With anti-Europe sentiment running high, bailout fatigue widespread and austerity resentment reaching a fever pitch, the Dutch election of 12 September was widely seen as a bellwether ballot. For a while, the euro-sceptic Socialist Party seemed destined for a landslide win, with polls showing the socialists taking 39 seats in the 150-seat lower house – a 24-seat gain – leaving the conservative VVD of prime minister Mark Rutte in the dust.
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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
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
From our perspective: Armour-plating won’t do
Many criticisms of the quantitative impact study consultation of the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority (EIOPA) on its holistic balance sheet proposal focused on the exercise itself – that it is too complex and opaque, and only large pension funds have the resources to do it.
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Features
Taking the time to assess the risk
The latest consultation paper for the holistic balance sheet (HBS) within the revised IORP Directive has aroused great interest across Europe. The European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority (EIOPA) gave the pensions industry until 1 August to submit its input on the controversial first quantitative impact study (QIS) for the implementation of the HBS.
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FeaturesCrucial assumptions
Norman Dreger and Andrew Arbour outline why companies with pension obligations in multiple countries should consider carefully which mortality tables to use for accounting valuation
