All Features articles – Page 109
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Features
Pensions with independence
Canadian pension funds underwent a transformation in the 1990s, writes Joel Kranc. Greater independence has bred a private investment-style mantra that is envied around the world
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Features
The real safe haven?
High yield is priced so keenly it would take a euro-zone break-up to really threaten investors, finds Anthony Harrington
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Features
A different world
Now we have reached the ripe old age of 15, IPE has achieved a fairly good perspective on things. Back in February 1997 when we published our first issue, e-mail was a novelty and hand-held computing devices were a twinkle in someone’s eye.
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Features
Consultants could improve
Almost half of the respondents to this month’s Off The Record survey used investment consultants on a retainer basis, although just slightly fewer used them on an occasional or project basis. Only two respondents never use consultants.
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Features
Diary of an Investor: To be charitable
It is a windy morning at the end of January and I am driving to a conference in Amsterdam.
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Features
Changed landscape
Iain Morse outlines the effect impending regulations will have on the custody industry and defined benefit pension funds
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Features
Change without regret
Liam Kennedy spoke with Angelien Kemna, chief investment officer of APG, the Netherlands’ largest pension asset manager with AUM of €278bn, about her policies of ‘minimum regret’ and ‘controlled simplification’
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Features
Stay on top of benefits
Gail Moss reports on best practice to ensure pensioners receive the right benefit at the right time
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Features
Back to business
In the April 2010 edition of IPE, I wrote on these pages about my amusement that active managers always think it’s “a great time for active management”. I thought that uncertainties around the euro-zone, China’s economy, forthcoming elections and ‘geopolitical hotspots’ would keep us firmly in a ‘risk-on, risk-off’ world with stubbornly high market correlation.
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Features
One step forward, two steps back
Given the problems in Europe, distressed debt would appear to be all the rage, writes Joel Kranc. But waiting out events might prove to be even more lucrative
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Features
Back to the real economy
Government and bank debt is the problem, not the solution, writes Christine Johnson. If you want safety, follow the money – to large corporates
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Features
Lost in accounting
It looks like 2012 is going to be busy for the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) as significant projects towards completion, some affecting pensions accounting. In the first quarter of the year the feedback statement on the agenda consultation process will be published. If you are expecting this to be a simple binary choice some time before Easter that adds up to ‘Yes, we will do pension plan measurement issues,’ or ‘No, we won’t,’ then think again. The board will only take that decision after it has held a series of roundtable meetings and tied in the agenda process with the conclusions reached in the entirely separate strategic review.
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Features
Austria can learn from Denmark
Birgit Vogt-Majarek, Dr Natalie Seitz and Jakob Arffmann explain how Austria’s pension system might benefit from the experiences of Denmark in promoting greater participation of the over-50s in the labour market
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Features
Updating the update
Our glorious G20 leaders have charged the IASB with two tasks in relation to financial instruments accounting: reduce the complexity of accounting standards for financial instruments; and strengthen accounting recognition of loan-loss provisions by incorporating a broader range of credit information.
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Features
From our perspective: Part of the solution
One of the more depressing side effects of the financial crisis has been the spectacle of government attacks on funded pensions. But the practice is not new. Back in autumn 2003, the Belgian government nationalised €3.6bn in first pillar pension assets held by the former state telecoms monopoly Belgacom. As finance minister, Gordon Brown launched a bold attack on UK pensions in 1997 when he announced the abolition of dividend tax relief for pension funds.
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Features
Long-Term Matters: It’s the water, stupid
I predict that water will become the single most important physical commodity-based asset class, dwarfing oil, copper, agricultural commodities and precious metals.
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Features
Shifting horizons
Timo Loyttyniemi, managing director of Valtion Eläkerahasto (VER), tells Martin Steward why the Finnish buffer fund’s sure touch through the crisis means that the latest change to its targets might just be the last
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Features
An historic opportunity
Regulatory pressure, changes to the market structure and an ongoing de-leveraging process make the financial sector compelling for bondholders, argue Robert Montague and Satish Pulle
