All Features articles – Page 108
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Features
There will be no escape
Iain Morse finds that custodians will face greater levels of liability for the assets they safeguard for clients under AIFMD rules
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Features
Big ain’t so beautiful
Since 2007, the number of Dutch pension funds has declined by about a third as more and more, predominantly small, corporate pension funds have disappeared and the total is predicted to drop to 100 by 2014.
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Features
Trouble at the top
The news that Dutch civil service pension scheme ABP is suing Goldman Sachs over claims of a mis-sold collateralised debt obligation (CDO) raises questions over what counts as adequate due diligence. The €246bn fund – which has already sued Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank and JP Morgan over the same issue – alleges in a complaint filed in New York that the bank knew the product was riskier than it let on.
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Features
The more you struggle…
Remember Chinese finger traps? Those childhood toys that hold your fingertipsever more tightly the more you struggle to pull them free? Europe is full of them.
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Features
No Tobin for pensions
The concept of a universal financial transaction tax is a flawed one.
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Features
One year later
The Tohoku earthquake of March 2011 was one of the most devastating natural disasters of recent times. Martin Steward asks if it has changed the way investors look at their Japanese equity portfolios
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Features
Returns up despite equity losses
Considering the year that was 2011, many pension fund CIOs would have been happy to balance out equity losses with returns in other asset portfolios. This is the situation for most pension funds to report their 2011 results – with diversification able to offset the volatile equity market that for some schemes led to losses of 20% in stock holdings.
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Features
Do hedge funds delay reporting to save face?
It is well known that databases of historical hedge fund returns suffer from a range of biases – chiefly ‘survivor bias’. The worst funds cease reporting their results, sometimes simply because they go out of business, and some of the best stop reporting when they no longer need to raise assets.
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Features
Keiretsu culture
Japan’s corporate governance culture has been moving, albeit slowly, towards Western models. But Nina Röhrbein finds that the Olympus scandal could lead to some push-back
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Features
Help trustees to stay on the ball
Gail Moss outlines how pension funds can develop training schemes to enable trustees carry out their duties competently
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Features
Alphabet soup
The UK’s pensions minister, Steve Webb, is brave to try to keep alive the concept of pensions risk sharing. At the annual chairman’s dinner of the National Association of Pension Funds (NAPF) in February, he advocated what he termed ‘defined aspiration’ or ‘DA’ pensions to add to the already familiar DB and DC.
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Features
Alpha hunters
Nina Röhrbein spoke with Gediminas Milieska of SEB’s Lithuanian pension funds, who explains how his firm uses three types of open-ended funds to generate alpha
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Features
J’en ai marre
IASB project manager Denise Durant’s opening words to the 18 January IFRS Interpretations Committee meeting were innocuous enough: “We are not discussing the proposed amendment to IAS 1 derived from the conceptual framework because this amendment was proposed directly by the board and not by the committee.” Instead, she explained, the amendment “is going to be discussed at a later stage by the board.”
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Features
Sovereign debt crisis hits pension fund results
As pension funds across Europe release their preliminary results for 2011, the issue of the sovereign debt crisis is likely to dominate. Whether it be a shift in asset allocation – away from the few remaining periphery bonds generally held – or the fact liabilities escalated after a country’s debt ...
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Features
DNB’s new interest-rate average will limit cuts
The Dutch Pension Federation, and the largest pension funds, ABP, PFZW and PMT, cautiously welcomed the pensions regulator’s recent decision to adopt a three-month interest-rate average to calculate the yield curve.
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Features
Revised IORP puts pensions industry on alert
Last month IPE noted that 2012 would be an important year in terms of regulation for pension funds as the industry awaits a White Paper for a revised IORP directive. Needless to say, the first few days of January have already confirmed those thoughts as the pensions industry submitted its ...
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Features
Strategy and tactics
The annual strategy meeting of the Wasserdicht pension funds is always an interesting affair. We are meeting at a nice hotel in the area of Frankfurt, with a decent golf course. Helmut from our German Pensionskasse is our host and the chairman of the meeting.
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Features
Leader of the supertanker
ABP transformed itself in 2008 when it spun off APG to become an independent pension asset manager that could also manage assets for external pension funds.
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Features
Pawns in need of a knight
Eastman Kodak retirees, both present and future, would appear to be in need of a hero. They will be wringing their hands over the news that the company filed for bankruptcy protection in late January. Those based in the UK, however, are likely to be a bit more concerned about their retirement, and with good reason.
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Features
‘Keep it simple’
To mark our fifteenth anniversary, we asked 15 European pension funds about the past, present and future of pensions. Although eight respondents to this month’s Off The Record survey felt the trend would abate, all believed that increases in pension members’ longevity would continue in the 2010s and 2020s. Only two felt their fund was badly prepared to deal with this. A Dutch fund commented: “We already calculate a future increasing life expectancy, and I think it will be less than our calculations.”
