All Features articles – Page 384
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Features
Need to tap into wider information
A once-in-a-lifetime change has taken place in the behaviour of share prices since late 1998. Individual share price volatility has risen to levels markedly higher than at any previous time bar a brief period in the mid-1970s. This change has had a direct impact on portfolio risk levels – nearly ...
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Features
Integrale's long track record
Belgium has a long tradition of pension provision that has undergone many reforms through the years. Some players have been present in this market since its very early days, adapting themselves to the different social environments. Liège-based Integrale is one of them. Decades ago the way the Belgian state managed ...
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Features
Market shaken by Merrill Lynch investigation
Merrill Lynch may be $100m poorer having reached an agreement with New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer but, in doing the deal, it has avoided the prospect of a forced separation of research and investment banking. Nevertheless, the scandal has run long enough to have a huge impact on the ...
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Features
Italian moves stalled
The pensions reform package to the closed pensions market in Italy has run into trouble and is unlikely to be passed, warns Roberto Casanova at Milan-based financial consultants IAMA Consulting. Were the package passed, IAMA predicts assets under management in the closed pension fund industry will grow from E3.6bn to ...
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Features
'Jigsaw pieces in place'
If the European Court of Justice follows the opinion of the advocate general in the Danner v Finland case on pensions taxation, this would be the first attempt made to abolish all obstacle relating to pensions tax issues. This view was expressed by Leonardo Sforza of consultants Hewitt Associates at ...
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Features
Judgement by your peers
Now 60% of UK pension funds have a customised benchmark, with the incidence even stronger among the larger funds. This is reminiscent of the position in the early 1970s, when funds generally had their own benchmark. Some funds were consistently outperforming their customised benchmarks but clearly underperforming their peers. When ...
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Features
Upstaging the locals
Continental Europe may be on the cusp of an investment revolution, but it seems increasingly questionable whether many of those banks that make up the (already much depleted) ranks of the region’s local custody providers will still be around to reap the coming bounty. In recent years only the UK ...
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Features
Sobering long-term view
The ‘Golden 90s’ for equities are definitely over. In the mean time, most investors have recognised that the sooner we put the past decade behind us, the better off we will be at the end of the next decade. Equity markets across Europe have fallen sharply over the past two ...
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Features
Making pensions popular
Simplification was the topic firmly on the agenda at the National Association of Pension Funds (NAPF) annual conference in Brighton. “The pendulum has swung too far in favour of regulation and complexity”, Alistair Darling, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions told the conference. Hardly a day goes by without ...
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Features
Market stuck in a rut
Hopes for a significant recovery in the UK equity markets this year have all but disappeared. Investor responses to negative news in the telecommunications sector have been surprisingly bearish, say strategists. If this attitude persists, market levels are bound to stay depressed, they say. Shares of companies in old economy ...
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Features
Taking the slow road to reform
The development of the Italian pension fund industry has slowed down. Political discussions regarding the reform of the system, changes in the labour market and the never-ending negotiations about the transfer of the TFR into pensions, have increased uncertainty about the future growth of the industry. According to a recent ...
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Features
Why tri-party repo
The case for investors conducting business on an increasingly secured or collateralised basis only appears to grow stronger and more compelling with each mounting crisis or default in the market. Earlier this year we had AIB and large FX losses. This was followed swiftly by the Enron default. Traditionally legislation ...
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Features
Technology turns the tables
Is big becoming a problem in the custodian world? This article explores the issues that big custodians are having to contend with in an environment of more rapid change and fierce competition. The catchword of the large custodian banks has traditionally been that size matters. To make money, develop technology ...
