All Features articles – Page 106
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Features
From our perspective: The belt tightens
Europe’s economic turmoil is depressing defined benefit (DB) pension funding levels as yields drop and coverage ratios move in tandem. The fall in the 30-year euro swap rate from 2.54% to 2.19% between 25 Apr and 15 May makes certain that rights cuts will have to take place at Dutch pension funds, which have little hope of recovery in the short term. UK pension funding levels, and those in other countries, have also moved south, with implications for asset allocation and policy making.
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Features
Regulation more worrying than contagion
News last month that JP Morgan Chase reported more than $2bn (€1.6bn) in trading losses brought to mind the fears of 2008, when the collapse of Lehman Brothers shook the financial world to its core. But the main difference between now and then is that participants in the derivatives market seem more concerned about new regulation than about the threat of contagion.
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Features
Restless continent
Africa is set for a busy year of elections – and it has already experienced an old-fashioned coup. Charlotte Adlung assesses the political risks behind the investment opportunities
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Features
Faith in the long term
A notable feature of the institutional investors’ panel at the Milken Global Conference in Los Angeles at the end of April was a faith in the ability of investors to reap long-term risk premia and a determination to do so.
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Features
A safe harbour
Nina Röhrbein spoke with Cees Blokzijl, director of pensions at Vopak Pension Fund, about the interaction between the fund and its fiduciary manager
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Features
Straitened times, new measures
This year’s IPE Top 400 Asset Managers survey charts a flatlining global asset management industry with total AUM of €36.3trn at end-2011, a whisker up from the previous year’s total of €36.2trn. And despite striking a rare note of optimism in this month’s magazine as we report projections for the Turkish pension market to grow to €100bn in 10 years, the outlook is also gloomy for Europe’s pension markets. European institutional assets were down 3.5% in 2011, according to our survey.
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Features
Moment of reckoning
The 300 Club, a grouping of leading investment professionals, believes that modern portfolio theory and practice are failing institutional investors at a time when depressed funding levels require smarter ways of investing. It has issued its first paper, The Death of Common Sense, written by Amin Rajan, a member of the 300 Club and a regularcontributor to IPE. We asked him some questions
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Features
Smooth operators
The Swiss are taking pains to make their banks as risk-free as possible to ensure client loyalty, finds Iain Morse
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Features
Private assets on public markets
Listed private equity struggles to drum up interest even from private investors. Anthony Harrington asks, does it have any role to play in institutional portfolios?
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Features
Northern lights
Iceland’s Frjalsi is starting to feel the effects of economic recovery but capital controls weigh heavily over its investment policy. Nina Röhrbein spoke with Arnaldur Loftsson and Marinó Tryggvason
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Features
QE – like pensions – isn’t just an over-60s issue
Here in the UK, the government’s Budget just changed personal tax allowances. Over-65s can earn about £2,500 (€3,055)more than under-65s before being taxed – but from April 2013 that allowance will be frozen until it comes into line with that for under-65s.
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Features
Not all sovereign debt is created equal
Pension funds are the cure for all ills facing the world – or so politicians would have us believe. This is true in many countries – the UK government is pushing schemes to take on infrastructure projects it cannot or will not pay for.
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Features
All change
Iain Morse finds that the creation of a single, mandatory central settlement depositary later this year will have wide-ranging effects on the trading and settlement of securities in Russia
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Features
Small is beautiful
Smaller companies make up the vast majority of the economy, are better-aligned with shareholders, more entrepreneurial – and not necessarily young and inexperienced. No wonder they both outperform and diversify large-caps, writes Nick Hamilton
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Features
Focus Group: Risky business
Twenty-seven respondents to this month’s Off The Record survey used liability-driven investment (LDI) strategies. On average, 63% of their liability risk was currently hedged.
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Features
Keeping tabs on the costs
Pension funds and trustees need to know exactly what different DC pension providers are charging so they can compare them against each other. Gail Moss reports
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Features
Political decisions for investors
Helene Williamson outlines the complex process of assessing political risk in emerging markets and warns investors they ignore this risk their peril
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Features
Initial margin proposal for OTC derivatives
Just as Brussels had seemingly smoothed over its relations with the pension industry by granting a temporary exemption from the EMIR Directive, a new consultation paper has stirred things up. In a joint paper, the European Securities and Markets Authority, the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority and the European Banking Authority (EBA), announced that they are considering a requirement to “exchange, post or collect” initial margins for bilateral over-the-counter (OTC) derivative trades.
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Features
Diary of an Investor: Retirement questions
Here in the Netherlands we like to hold a special event for our colleagues when they retire. And there is usually something extra special when someone senior takes their pension.
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Features
Efficiency drive
A television documentary series in the UK is currently transporting British viewers back to the 1970s, an era remembered for the oil crisis but also for government energy efficiency campaigns.
