All Features articles – Page 381
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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 ...
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Features
Lessons in how not to do it
One of the most interesting reports to emerge in Ireland following on from the reserve fund announcement by the government appeared in December 2000. Commissioned by the Irish Association of Pension Funds (IAPF), the report by consultancy Shane F Whelan & Co focused on the possible investment strategies that the ...
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Features
Power to the lay trustees
An extremely important development in the UK pensions industry over the past few years has been a significant change in the role of pension scheme trustees. For example, the Myners report, although highlighting the major issues around the institutional investment market, concluded that trustees are “at the heart of the ...
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Features
Spreading the load
The first tenders to be put out into the market by the NTMA were those to find the advisers that would help it in the mammoth task of implementing a suitable investment strategy, appointing the requisite investment managers, selecting an appropriate custodian and choosing the best transition manager to bring ...
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Features
Long and rocky road
The 1997 Green paper drawn up by internal commissioner Mario Monti is often seen as seminal in getting today’s proposed directive underway. In many ways this is true but the paper, and subsequent discussion, drew heavily on the mistakes and lessons learnt from the first unsuccessful attempt. A fairer assessment ...
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Features
Slipping silently into the markets
While the appointment of 15 investment managers to manage e7bn in assets is in itself no mean feat, the transition of the lion’s share of the assets from cash deposits to market via 14 different investment briefs left the NTMA – in conjunction with Watson Wyatt, the consultant appointed to ...
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Features
Siemens targets Mittelstand plans
With 450,000 employees, Siemens is Europe’s largest employer and ranks among the biggest globally. While the group’s pensions liabilities at E19bn may not be the same as some of the giant US corporations, Siemens has been making determined efforts to put in place a structure that would not just manage ...
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Features
Wilshire provides risk system
In its search for a risk management system for the fund, the NTMA finally settled on US analytics specialist Wilshire. Mike Olson, managing director of Wilshire’s London office, explains that the NTMA is using three different products from Wilshire: a product named ‘Atlas’ for equities, ‘Axiom’ for fixed income investments ...
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Features
Weathering the storm
After a period of relative stability, analysts are reporting renewed caution and uncertainty in Europe’s markets, brought on initially by the threat of terrorist attacks and war, and now by the WorldCom affair. “Quite frankly this is another accounting scandal that we could do without,” says Catherine Reilly, an economist ...
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Features
Keeping tabs on 100 schemes
With more than 60,000 employees worldwide, the basic retirement benefit guideline at British American Tobacco (BAT) is that each scheme should be competitive in relation to local market practice. “Our employees are literally scattered around the globe, with no real concentration in any one country. Trying to coordinate our retirement ...
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Features
Norway issues vast $5.5bn equity RFPs
Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM), overseer of the $75bn (E81bn) Norwegian petroleum fund, has announced a $5.5bn equities RFP with the initial tender process being run through the IPE-Quest electronic manager selection system. NBIM is looking to appoint new external active mandates in five different regions: Europe, UK, Japan, Australia ...
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Features
SwissAir names five sub-fund managers for e600m
SwissAir has announced the names of managers appointed to run e600m in five sub-funds belonging to the recently restructured pension scheme. The fund has appointed managers to five mandates, each valued at approximately e120m. Wellington has been appointed to run both an active US equities and an active European equities ...
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Features
Minister involves ABA at highest level
The ABA, the German Occupational Pensions Association, has called on labour minister Walter Riester to defer his plans to scrap deferred compensation in 2008. Speaking at the association’s annual conference in Bonn, the chairman of the ABA Boy-Jürgen Andresen, said he would prefer to see the deferred compensation scheme, remain ...
