All Features articles – Page 250
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Features
How BASF has it taped
Let us rewind to the year 1888. In that year BASF was one of the first companies in Germany to set up a Pensionskasse. Fast-forward to the present: Today it caters for BASF’s German employees with a funding of around E4.5bn, and forms part of a network of schemes with ...
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Features
Belgium starts to warm up
As a nation, Belgium comes way down the list of private equity investors in Europe. In 2003, the latest year for which figures are available, private equity investments equalled only 0.1% of gross domestic product, according to the European Venture Capital Association. That was less than half the European average ...
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Features
Managing home bias
IPE asked three pension funds in three countries – in Finland, Ireland and Switzerland – the same question: ‘Do pension funds have a duty to invest in local industries?’ Here are their answers: Bríd Horan, general manager of Ireland’s ESB Pension Fund, which has AUM of e2.8bn. “Irish pension ...
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Features
Fear of a bubble unfounded
The global hedge fund market has grown at a rate of circa 20% over the last four years, total assets under management reaching an estimated $1trn (e793bn) by year-end 2004. Inflows did slow, however, during the second half of 2004, not least because of the comparatively modest performance experienced in ...
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Features
Sharing and caring
Currently, employers bear the investment risk in defined benefit (DB) pension plans while employees bear the risk in defined contribution (DC) type plans. Recent equity market performance, longevity risk and the impact of international accounting rules have persuaded many employers to introduce a DC alternative to their DB plans. This ...
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Features
Cash increases your options
Increasingly, pension funds in Europe are seeking better ways of managing their cash. Peter Eerdmans, senior investment consultant at Watson Wyatt in London, sees two main reasons for this focus. Cash is carried within the fund, for instance by an equities manager who has not invested it, and this may ...
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Features
The eye of CEIOPS
Ahead of the 23 September deadline for the implementation of European occupational retirement provision (IORP), directive the Committee of European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Supervisors (CEIOPS) has published a discussion paper on the role of supervisory co-operation in facilitating membership of cross-border pension funds. Europe has a wide diversity of ...
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Features
Chickens come home to roost
In late 1993 the Croatian government instituted an economic stabilisation programme that was extraordinarily successful in curbing hyperinflation. But it led indirectly to the creation of a pension debt that delayed the introduction of a second and third pillar and more than a decade later threatens the country’s fiscal stability ...
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Features
Mounting concerns over workforce size
The EU issued some worrying population projections for the next 50 years, with a view to updating pension expenditure forecasts in the EU25. Also, the European Federation for Retirement Provision (EFRP) told the Commission that its push to eliminate tax discrimination of pension funds was moving ahead too slowly. The ...
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Features
No longer plain cooking
Dutch pension fund giant PGGM does not hold cash as a strategic asset class. However the fund holds a substantial cash position, says Marc Nuijten, head of treasury and overlay management at the Dutch pension fund. “This is partly due to the fact that the fund has an allocation to ...
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Features
Core satellite thinking in orbit
Funds of hedge funds are now pension funds’ preferred route into hedge fund investing. Of the €1.2bn invested in hedge funds by Europe’s 50 largest pension funds, €920m is in the hands of funds of hedge funds, according to Boston-based research consultancy Cerulli Associates. One effect of this has been ...
