All Features articles – Page 380
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Features
Private equity 'to double'
Private equity investment will continue to grow over the next 10 years and pension funds in the US and Europe are expected to double their allocation to the asset class according to a new report by the Economist Intelligence Unit. The report, produced in conjunction with the private equity company ...
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Features
Laying down a legacy
For Irish finance minister Charlie McCreevy, interest in the concept of an Irish reserve fund for pensions came some time before his arrival on the Irish political scene. “My own interest stems from two factors. Firstly, for many years, I would read what the occasional commentators wrote about the so-called ...
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Features
The index is not enough
When markets were soaring and active managers were struggling, indexation was flavour of the month. Now, with markets in the doldrums, the product getting all the attention is enhanced indexation. As ever, the two drivers for the change in fashion are our old friends risk and return. Risk, not only ...
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Features
Rebuilding of US savings key factor
The disconnect so far this year between positively surprising global economic statistics and falling equity markets is described by many commentators as highly abnormal, with the only precedent occurring in the early 1930s. There appears to be a great reluctance to recognise the extreme abnormality of the whole post-1997 cycle. ...
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Features
Key features of IORPs
The directive has espoused the prudent man principle with a few minor restrictions on cross-border funds. Member states can choose to retain quantitative rules. Some specific quantitative restrictions can be imposed by a member state not only on its domestic pensions funds but also on pension funds from another state ...
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Features
Levelling the playing field
One of the greatest challenges for real estate investment managers operating internationally is ‘levelling the playing field’. Every market has its own customs and traditions that turn the business of making real estate investments into a complex process. As a result, most skilled international real estate investment managers come equipped ...
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Features
Filling in the gap
The growth of third pillar defined contribution schemes in France has been hampered, historically, by the generosity of the country’s first and second pillar pension systems. The combination of a high level of social security pension and the complementary ‘repartition’ (pay-as-you-go) schemes of ARRCO and AGIRC – mandatory for all ...
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Features
Money flows go property way
Institutions are back in the real estate market. Nothing to do with property, everything to do with the current state of equity markets, says Andrew Jackson, investment director of real estate, Standard Life Investments in Edinburgh. Poor equity performance has led to a reappraisal of real estate by UK institutional ...
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Features
Scottish managers shift focus
Scottish asset managers have always had to look beyond their own national market for their business. South of the border has historically been the major market for the managers from Edinburgh and Glasgow, but some have fished successfully further afield, particularly in North America. Now with the European markets opening ...
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Features
Institutional funds make rapid progress
German investment law provides institutional investors, which are legal entities, the opportunity to organise – in a particularly efficient manner in terms of both management and taxation – their real-property investments already existing in Germany or are going to be effected there. This can be carried out through interposing a ...
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Features
Skandia launches global giant
Skandia, Scandinavia’s largest insurance company, has just launched a global mutual fund company, Skandia Global Funds (SGF). SGF hopes to leverage off Skandia’s worldwide businesses to offer a fund family comprising of 20 sub funds, with the intention of increasing up to 30 by the end of the year. SGF ...
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Features
Giving mobile workers pension wheels
Promoting labour mobility within Europe is one of the central aims of the EU. Yet one large obstacle to this is the portability of supplementary pension rights. A European Commission directive, adopted in 1998, was intended to give supplementary pension rights the same sort of protection as basic pension rights. ...
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Features
Russian pension reform goes on
As the main achievement, the new three-pillar system incorporating the mandatory funded pillar was launched in 1 January 2002. Now 2% out of 28% of pension contributions calculated from the payroll are used for investment purposes. In 2002, all contributions to the funded system go to the public Pension Fund ...
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Features
Make room for gold
It never rains, but it pours. Which, for most of us, is precisely the moment that we remember – with a certain degree of bitterness – how we so nearly picked up our umbrella before rushing out of the door. And so it is with gold. For two decades, the ...
