All Features articles – Page 217
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Features
Moving smartly up the agenda
It used to be a simple enough thing. Allocate to equities, and ignore your risk exposure. Strong markets, and pension surpluses, meant you didn’t have to worry. With the heady days of the 1990s gone, pension funds are facing tougher times, and risk management has become an important issue. Not ...
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Features
For all the right reasons
When the French Fonds de Reserve pour les Retraites (FRR) launched a manager selection process for its private equity programme last December, it was embarking on the next stage of an ambitious strategy which may well form a blueprint for other first-time investors in this asset class. The FRR, a ...
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Features
Anatomy of satisfaction
Fonchim, the €4.5bn industrywide pension fund for Italy’s chemical and pharmaceutical industry workers, has been one of the most successful of the new complementary pension funds at recruiting members. The fund has attracted 116,000 members, 60% of its potential membership, since it was launched in 1999. This is far higher ...
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Features
A rose by any other name...
What’s in a name? The search for a new term for ‘pensions’ that might be less off-putting for scheme members is an endeavour without real appeal to those managing pension plans. The predicament is one of coming up with something that is much worse than what we have or that ...
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Features
Asset managers rise to challenges
One of the greatest challenges facing the Irish pensions market at present is the average funding level of Irish pension funds, which stands at around 70%. This came about largely due to high equity exposures at the time of the stock market turmoil and today restricts the room for manoeuvre ...
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Features
An awkward customer
In a world of increasing demand for investment solutions based around liability driven benchmarks, how do global bond portfolios fit in? Historically, as Paul Abberley, head of fixed income at ABN AMRO Asset Management points out, “global bonds have always been problematic as an asset class in an optimisation framework. ...
