All Features articles – Page 270
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Features
Tsunami support fund launched
Pension funds are founded for one sole purpose – to make sure workers get a decent pension when they retire. So it came as a bit of a surprise when two of Europe’s biggest pension funds, ABP and PGGM, announced they were setting up a support fund for the elderly ...
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Features
Irish funds venture shy
Since the go-go eighties, Ireland has been punching above its weight in cultivating a profile as a home of technological innovation. In 2003, private equity funds invested in Ireland totalled e255m. This represented 0.194% of the country’s GDP, and one of the highest percentages in Europe, higher than Germany, Belgium ...
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Features
Hedge funds in the mainstream
Hedge funds have now moved into the mainstream with 32% of European institutions now using them, Greenwich Associates says. “Among European institutions, the proportion using hedge funds jumped to 32% in 2004 from 23% a year earlier,” the Connecticut-based consulting firm sasy. It added that US institutional use climbed to ...
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Features
The greatest of these is MBS
“US mortgage-backed securities have the highest Sharpe ratios of all US asset classes, stock or bond. Bonds in general have a higher Sharpe ratio than stocks going back ten years. But even among bonds mortgage-backed securities have had the highest Sharpe ratios.This fact surprises many people. “Conventional wisdom states that ...
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Features
Multi-manager solutions at TKP Investments
In the past few years, more institutional investors have adopted a “multi-manager” investment practice, where they allocate their money over several asset management houses. At TKP Investments (TKPI), an AEGON subsidiary, this investment practice is nothing new. Since 1989, the independent asset manager, formerly known as the pension fund administrator ...
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Features
The jury is still out
So in a continuation of the festive seasonal spirit, here are some quiz questions for pension fund trustees:LDI stands for ‘Liability driven investing’, which was the hot topic of 2004. What acronym best describes the preceding regime? Was it: PCMI (Pension Cost Minimization Investing)? IMDI (Investment Manager Driven Investing)? or ...
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Features
Middle manager views
At end-March 2004 Dutch pension fund had total assets of e480bn, according to the latest Bureau Bosch report on Trends of the Dutch Investment Management Market*. And some e316bn of Dutch institutional assets were managed externally, up from e296.6bn a year earlier. At the top of the rankings the report ...
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Features
Is mandatory outsourcing welcome?
The Minister of Social Affairs and Employment in the Netherlands is investigating whether Dutch pension funds should change the way in which they implement pension schemes. This is to take account of possible developments in European competition law. The minister is considering requiring pension funds to split the pension fund ...
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Features
A schizophrenic market
Perhaps one of the striking aspects of investing in European equities five years after the introduction of the euro, is the continued ambiguity of what a European mandate should represent. It is rather as if when considering an American mandate, the choice included mandates for the US excluding Texas as ...
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Features
Reconciling paths to matching
There is now general agreement in the UK defined benefit (DB) pensions industry that we are moving towards much higher bond allocations and far lower equity allocations – the debate is largely on how long the transition will take. Furthermore, there is agreement on the major risks facing pension funds, ...
