All Features articles – Page 115
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Features
The Mediterranean: Some scope for reform
Roxanne McMeeken examines Greece’s economic woes and the impact of pension reforms. There are signs that the private sector will have to play a greater role in future provision
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Features
Liam Kennedy: Infrastructure pains
The US pioneered the development of modern fast roads with its interstate highway network in the 1950s and 60s. Yet the August 2007 collapse of the Mississippi Bridge in Minnesota highlighted the decrepit state of some of this infrastructure. And it is not just roads that need to be developed.
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Features
Thinking the unthinkable
I have lost a lot of money in recent years by listening to the collective wisdom of the Anglo-Saxon high priests of finance on the subject of the euro. They have been universally critical, and frankly ridiculed its chances of survival. As Europe’s sovereign debt crisis has unfolded, the crowing satisfaction from these quarters has been deafening. And yet the euro not only refuses to die, but goes from strength to strength against the dollar. Maybe it is time to turn to an iconoclast to understand what is really going on.
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Features
Scarcity value
Nina Röhrbein spoke with Vincent Ribuot, chief investment officer of UMR Corem, one of France’s few pension funds about working within a life insurance dominated market and the limitations it can cause
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Features
It’s a target, stupid!
Any regular reader of this column would know that the IASB and the US FASB would hardly dare fail to miss their self-assigned 30 June 2011 deadline for convergence of their respective accounting literature.
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Features
In pursuit of a good mix
Just over 88% of this month’s respondents said they invested with managers who use quantitative tools – although we should acknowledge some self-selection bias. Of these, 29% have a specialist quant manager section in their portfolio (and a further 12% only have them in their hedge funds) while 35% have quants working across their entire portfolio.
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Features
From our perspective: Get reforming
In Greek mythology, Sisyphus was compelled to roll a boulder up a hill, continually, only to watch it roll down again and to repeat the procedure again and again.
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Features
A question of faith
“We want to strengthen faith in the second pillar,” the Swiss government frequently points out when defending its plans for structural reform of the Swiss mandatory occupational pension system. But according to the Swiss pension fund association ASIP, it is not individuals’ faith that needs strengthening.
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Features
Economic situation mirrored by gifts
“Some of my clients are doin’ real good, some not,” said a Texan attendee at this year’s CFA Annual Conference. “But we are proud to be Americans.”
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Features
Diary of an Investor: Keeping it real
I’m on my way to Brussels for a meeting. Since my car is in the garage for its annual service I decide to take the train. In the old days it used to take three hours from Amsterdam to Brussels but, since we built the new high-speed rail line, it takes less than two. I say we built it, but actually the Belgians built their own part and finished a lot later than we did.
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Features
Come up, we’re sinking
Feeling conflicted about inflation? If so, take comfort in the fact you are not alone. At the moment, everyone on Planet Earth appears to have ambivalent feelings about the topic. In the space of just two weeks, the industry has generated surveys, studies and reports prophesying that either inflation is about to spread across the planet like The Blob, devouring income and destroying wealth, or that the spectre of deflation is about drag us all back to the 1930s.
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Features
Building Bubbleville?
Emma Cusworth asks if there is enough infrastructure for sale to cope with investor demand – and how to buy it cost-effectively
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Features
Best practice for the DC payout phase
As DC pension systems grow, it is crucial to ensure scheme members get the best possible value from their savings at the payout stage, finds Gail Moss
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Features
In pole position to become CEE hub
The Warsaw Stock Exchange is proving a favourite with CEE-originated IPOs and emerging CEE countries. Iain Morse reports
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Features
The small print on alternatives
Pension schemes spare no expense buying ‘proper advice’ on investment matters – but often neglect to seek it on their investment vehicles. Winston Penhall outlines the legal niceties of private equity and hedge fund investments
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Features
Pragmatism redefines active-passive
With investors losing trillions in the 2007-09 bear market, they are questioning whether active management delivers value. In the process, they are also recognising that active and passive management are but a means to an end. What really matters is the client’s own investment philosophy and the combination of active and passive strategies that is consistent with it.
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Features
Changing of the guards at Aba
The sceptre has been handed over – in this case, it is actually a shiny metal cigar case which the first chairman of the Aba, Albrecht Weiß (1890-1961), received from members for his sixtieth birthday in the early years of Aba’s existence.
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Features
Feathering the NEST
Jonathan Williams finds out how the UK’s National Employment Savings Trust is setting out to encourage new members to join
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Features
Martin Steward: A tragedy of errors
When three of the world’s major central banks do three different things for three different reasons, it’s a fair bet that at least one of them is making a policy error. But which one is making the error, how serious is it, and do the other two need to worry?
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Features
Good time for private equity
Just over 60% of respondents to this month’s Off The Record survey said their fund invested in private equity. One respondent said they were about to start investing, while the remaining respondents do not invest.
