All Features articles – Page 266
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Features
Moving the goal posts
Many in the European pension fund industry would consider their Icelandic colleagues to be in an enviable position. A series of agreements between trade unions and employers since the late 1960s created a structure that has nearly universal coverage, was robust enough to shrug off the financial market meltdown of ...
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Features
Tough going for investors
Narrowing credit spreads are good for the borrower and great for the lender or investor if they own the debt while it improves. However, as spreads diminish, so too do prospects for excess returns. Credit spreads have been shrinking for some years now and have reached record lows for some ...
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Features
Paying for the good life
One of the requirements of membership of the Salvation Army, the quasi-military Christian mission created by William Booth in 1865, is that members abstain from alcohol and avoid tobacco. This has created an unusual situation for the actuaries of the Salvation Army’s UK pension schemes, who have to take account ...
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Features
Greece looks to Ireland for reform model
The Greek government may turn to Ireland for “inspiration” on pension changes, a finance and economy ministry spokeswoman has said. The government is watching the changes launched in the EU member states with similar life expectancy problems for inspiration, the spokeswoman said. For the time being changes to the Greek ...
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Features
Tobback: making his mark
Belgium’s new pensions and environment minister Bruno Tobback has his work cut out. The ever more important and contentious portfolio of pensions offers challenges galore. But to make his mark Tobback must, at the tender age of 35, prove himself against the backdrop of his influential predecessor Frank Vandenbroucke, architect ...
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Features
It's a question of returns
There is some acceptance among pension funds in Europe that tactical asset allocation (TAA) – today’s version of it, at least – can top up their investment returns. But it is only in the Netherlands that TAA is widely used and spoken about. TAA, which can either be done by ...
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Features
Looking for the sweet spot
Sometimes what appears to be a creeping change can turn out to be the forerunner of a seismic shift and that may be the case for what is happening in global bond mandates. Richard Wohanka, CEO of Fortis Investments and with a bond background himself describes the situation: “In the ...
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Features
Prices on the move
Swiss deal opportunities come largely from medium-sized family businesses, which have become much more aware of private equity and look to the asset class to solve succession issues, Betschart says. Whereas before these companies valued private equity investors for their potential financial input, they are slowly beginning to understand that ...
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Features
New solutions to old problems
Pension professionals have long known about the existence of the duration mismatch being run in most funded pension schemes. This problem has been ignored for various reasons, including an historic lack of hedging instruments, uncertainty in valuation of long-term liabilities and buoyant equity markets. The duration mismatch risk is simply ...
