All Features articles – Page 318
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Features
Credit spreads: a great year, from the bottom up
Last year was an excellent year for credit throughout the world’s capital markets. Spreads across all levels of the credit spectrum narrowed markedly over the course of the first 11 months of the year. Figures from Standard & Poor’s show that investment grade credit spreads among US non-financials declined from ...
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Features
Holy grail - or Pandora's box
Has tactical asset allocation (TAA) disappeared? TAA – taking advantage of short-term anomalies in the relative values of assets – has been significantly eroded in pension fund investment structures. Although it is still present within portfolios at a very modest level. In past times UK pension funds funds chose the ...
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Features
State Street's confidence in new investor index
The State Street Investor Confidence Index is published at 10am Eastern Time in Boston on the second to last Tuesday of each month. Developed by State Street Associates, the bank’s academic partner, the index is “an unbiased quantitative measure of the investment behaviour of thousands of institutional investors”. The index ...
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Features
Restoring investor confidence
This month’s Off The Record focuses on financial scandals and asks whether the succession of Enron-type scandals over the past few years has damaged public confidence in the financial system. How serious is the damage, and how much trust has been lost? A recent Harris poll found that 90% of ...
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Features
Job market fugures confirm story
Our big picture for the global economy remains one of higher growth, with the US leading the global upturn. The US economy is changing for the better. Last quarter it grew at its highest pace since early 1984, with both capital spending and consumer spending posting big advances. The improvement ...
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Features
Consultation at heart of process
“Consultation has been the heart of our proposal,” says Baron Alexandre Lamfalussy. His words provide a valuable insight into the right way to construct workable legislation at the European level. He says the process that bears his name – while not necessarily making disagreements disappear, does at least bring them ...
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Features
Why pressure is mounting on DB plans in UK
The last few years have seen troubled times for all involved with the management of defined benefit (DB) pension plans within the UK, with large numbers of employers either closing their DB plans to new entrants or shutting down their plans for future accrual altogether. Based on the National Association ...
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Features
Where the dollar takes us
As is customary, end-of–year preparations have deterred many investors from actively participating in bond markets, so trading volumes have shrunk and trading ranges have narrowed. Foreign exchange markets, on the other hand, have been moving in to distinctly new territories. The US dollar has continued its downward trajectory, as the ...
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Features
EIORP step to pan-European funds
When the European Federation for Retirement Provision (EFRP) unveiled the original version of its linguistically challenging EIORP concept back in July 2000, the pan-European pensions directive was still something of a blocked pipe dream. The polemic strategy of Europe’s pension lobby group at the time reflects very much where we ...
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Features
Where politicians fear to tread
Falling equity values and the continuing commitment to a defined benefit scheme have combined to turn local government pension schemes (LGPS) into a landscape of black holes. The chickens well and truly come home to roost as at 31 March this year, when the next tri-annual valuations take place. The ...
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Features
Waving the flag for funding
The idea for a pension fund for members of the European Parliament began on a paper tablecloth in an Athens restaurant. It was sketched by Richard Balfe and a fellow member of the European Parliament (MEP) Anthony Simpson. They felt that MEPs fared worse than their national parliamentary counterparts in ...
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Features
Two funds opt for hedge strategies
Two European pension funds have made commitments to hedge funds as part of a growing trend. The E1.3bn pension fund of Dutch research institute TNO has allocated E30m to hedge funds, while in the UK, the Kvaener pension fund has allocated £25m (E35m). The Rijswijk-based TNO has awarded two E15m ...
