All Features articles – Page 209
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Features
How tight a hold on the reins?
Last month, Paternoster, a company created by former Prudential UK head Mark Wood, announced that it has secured £500m (e722m) of equity financing. The firm has been set up to transfer the defined benefit pension fund liabilities off a corporation’s balance sheet and into an FSA regulated insurance company. Amongst ...
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Features
Nuclear option for IORP?
After a somewhat quiet period, the directive on occupational pension funds is now very much back on the agenda at Brussels. It may be hard to believe but it’s now almost two and a half years since the Institutions for Occupational Retirement Provision (IORP) directive passed into European legislation. Member ...
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Features
Looking for the positive
An ancestor of George Putnam, the founder of US mutual fund manager Putnam Investments, established the original ‘prudent man principle’ which money managers to handle investor’s money as they would their own Three years ago Putnam Investments was involved in an improper trading scandal where some employees were found to ...
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Features
The practical realities
There was much fanfare and press coverage about the pensions directive, which was finally a legal requirement from 23 September 2005. In comparison, the proposed portability directive has received relatively little in the way of media attention – but the financial consequences of this legislation are far more worrying for ...
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Features
EU action may boost funds
With the exception of Italy, Denmark and Sweden, all EU member states apply either the EET or the TEE system to pension taxation. EET means that the pension contributions are ‘exempt’, that is the contributions are deductible from the taxable income, the investment results of the fund itself are also ...
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Features
Actuaries take on piloting role
For French companies, the financial year 2005 is the first year of compulsory use of the new international accounting rule IAS 19. In the meantime, the European directive on Institutions for Retirement Provision leads to more actuarial services, pension actuaries are concerned in some specifically French benefits such as as ...
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Features
Who's afraid of the D-word?
Derivatives - the portmanteau word for futures, options and swaps - send shivers down the spines of the boards of many pension funds, who see them as too complicated, too expensive and too risky. Yet derivatives offer a way out of the difficulties that pension funds face in the current ...
