All Features articles – Page 214
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Features
Changing managers can destroy value
The hiring and firing of investment managers by institutional investors in the UK and US can be a value-destroying activity, according to a report by global investment consultant Watson Wyatt. The paper states there is “room for improvement” on the part of institutional investors when it comes to decisions about ...
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Features
A changing marketplace
While it may be natural for European institutional investors to see European equities as a core asset class, what is not so clear is what should be included within that definition, and on what basis managers should be selected. The US market has a culture of much more specialisation of ...
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Features
Reformed character
In terms of geographical size and population, Belgium is one of the Euro-zones’s smaller member states, However back in the early 1990s Belgium was in the ignominious position of having one of Europe’s largest debt burdens. The financial figures at that time were especially grim: Belgian national debt as a ...
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Features
Conflicting priorities
In Hungary, as in many countries, the task of financing the state pension system is a growing problem. As market economics took hold in Hungary at the beginning of the 1990s, the real value of pensions fell away. This in turn made it clear that additional, private, funded pension provision ...
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Features
Conflicts still a possibility
Last month the UK’s Financial Services Authority (FSA) warned consultants, asset managers and pension fund trustees to guard against potential conflicts of interest in a highly concentrated consultant industry. The financial watchdog’s ‘Financial Risk Outlook 2006’ raised concerns about an over-dependence by pension fund trustees on the advice, skill and ...
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Features
Making the connection
Although British Telecom (BT), the UK’s incumbent telecoms operator, provides pension schemes in each of the 140 or so countries in which it operates, only a tiny proportion – around 0.3% – of the £34bn €49.5bn) of assets under management are accounted for by the company’s foreign subsidiaries. “The UK ...
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Features
Working in a data minefield
Sector funds were introduced at the beginning of 2004 following the enactment of the Vandenbroucke Law to broaden membership of second pillar schemes. While this aim is well on the way to being achieved other challenges remain. When the law became effective, some sectors already had in place a Fonds ...
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Features
A different kind of risk
People are living longer. It may be good news for the population at large, but pension fund managers will not be celebrating. Longevity risk has become a serious issue to grapple with. Annuities are costing more, and insurers are getting agitated, demanding more information from pension funds and raising their ...
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Features
Going for full disclosure
IPE asked three pension funds in three countries – in Austria, Estonia and Portugal – the same question: ‘What factors do you have to disclose?’ Here are their answers: Robert Kitt is fund manager at Estonia’s Hansa Investment Funds which has second pillar AUM of €155m and third ...
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Features
MetallRente records double-digit sales growth
MetallRente, the pension fund for employees in Germany’s metalworking and engineering industries, has recorded another year of double-digit growth in sales of its corporate pension. As of December 31 last year, MetallRente says it insured 155,417 workers in the sectors, an increase of around 15% on the previous year. The ...
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Features
State Street moving processing east?
State Street sees an opportunity to cut costs by moving some of its processing operations to eastern Europe, says chief executive Ron Logue. “We see eastern Europe as two different types of opportunity,” Logue told Bloomberg TV. “One is in terms of product manufacturing, processing at a lower factor cost ...
