All Features articles – Page 242
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Features
Pooling - waiting for the waters to stir
The Ashmolean Museum in Oxford owns an antique violin called the Messiah. It was made by Stradivarius in 1716 and remained in his family workshop until 1775 when it was sold by his son, Paolo, to an Italian dealer. From there, it passed to a collector, Luigi Tarsio, who used ...
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Features
Ringing tone of success
As the bulk of the Greek pension system was mired in mismanagement and overregulation, the country’s incumbent telecoms operator, OTE, has stood out as a beacon of success with a cumulative return since the OTE pension fund started investing in 2002 of 26.37% with returns of 10% in 2003, last ...
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Features
Looking for an alternative
The introduction of legislative and regulatory changes means the pensions sector is going through a period of flux. This has given rise to some uncertainty. “But what we know is that the trend towards the strengthening of old-age financial provision is continuing” in the wake of the 2002 Riester reforms, ...
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Features
Cover ratios bite
The challenges facing some of Switzerland’s largest pension funds on the investment front vary greatly given widely differing coverage ratios. The Civil Service Insurance Fund for the Canton of Zurich (BVK) is at one end of the spectrum with a coverage ratio at end-July of 95%. Though up sharply on ...
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Features
Blue skies with hint of cloud
Skies over the Danish pension landscape have remained remarkably blue during 2005, with equities lifting fund performance. The only clouds on the horizon are interest rates, which remain worryingly low. Leif Hasager, chief investment officer of the BankPension, which covers around 11,000 employees for companies in the Danish financial sector, ...
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Features
A bruising time for pensions
The Irish pension scene is certainly feeling somewhat bruised if not battered, as many of its proud aspirations are coming apart. Schemes have come under increasing challenges from funding and international accounting standards. “These have been compounded by the increase in liabilities caused not by any change in the numbers ...
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Features
MAN CEO says investable hedge indices 'wrong'
Investable hedge funds indices were given the thumbs down by a senior industry figure at the recent Funds Forum conference in Monaco. Stanley Fink, chief executive of MAN Group, which has $42bn (€34bn) of hedge fund assets under management, criticised the development of investable hedge funds indices and regarded them ...
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Features
Changes herald drift to DC
Norway’s expects that its long-awaited pension reform allowing defined contribution will come into effect at the beginning of next year. Among the main provisions is that all employers have to provide some type of pension plan for employees. This is likely to result in the development of defined contribution much ...
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Features
The changing EMD story
Part of the process of investing in emerging markets (EM) used to be that your double digit returns were gained alongside the very strong possibility that at some point, your portfolio would be engulfed in a wave of selling because of an individual country’s crisis. Things are changing: individual countries ...
