All Features articles – Page 408
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Features
Where hedge fund market falls down
Knowing and understanding the likely performance of an asset is a critical step in determining whether it has a place in the pension fund’s investment portfolio. Having effective benchmarks against which to measure manager performance is a prerequisite to proper monitoring of any investment. On both these counts, the hedge ...
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Features
Optimist at helm of EFRP
Alan Pickering, the new chairman of the European Federation of Retirement Provision (EFRP) and a former chair of the UK National Association of Pension Funds (NAPF) has been around long enough to know a pensions scare story when he hears it. His role at the EFRP confronts him directly with ...
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Features
EIORP fails to progress
The EFRP proposal for a pan-European pension vehicle – the European Institute for Occupational Retirement Provision (EIORP), did not get through last week’s ECOFIN council meeting, tax expert Peter Schonewille said at the conference. “This was despite the active support for the proposal by the Commission by putting them in ...
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Features
Making EIORPs a practical issue
When the ECOFIN council of European finance ministers rejected the European Federation of Retirement Provision’s (EFRP’s) ’EIORP’ (European Institution for Occupational Retirement Provision) pan-European pensions vehicle in October, the sighs from the EFRP’s Brussels headquarters were audible around Europe. Here was a vehicle that appeared to fit all the necessary ...
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Features
Opportunity for private equity industry
In the 1990s indexing in the quoted equity markets came of age in two senses. First, many institutional investors chose to move from active to passive management of their portfolios (ie from individual stock picking to pro-rata investment in a basket of stocks forming an index), and second, the performance ...
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Features
ETFs: whole new panorama
The success of exchange traded funds (ETFs) in the US has caused exchanges, asset managers, index providers and other market particpants to want to launch them in Europe. The first ETF was launched in the US in 1993. By 1997 there were 19 ETFs in the US with $6.7bn (e7.6bn) ...
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Features
Grappling with liability overhang
The current reform of Germany’s pension system has signalled a change in attitude to liabilities. The belief that assets can always match liabilities was summed up in the complacent government catchphrase “your pension is safe”. This certainty has been replaced by a growing sense that liabilities have grown too large ...
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Features
Pleas for help
As many as eight European member states may be blocking the proposed European Directive on occupational pension funds due to opposition to the prudent person investment rule, Othmar Karas, European Parliament rapporteur for the directive, has told the EFRP/NAPF International Conference in Brussels. In a speech urging the European pensions ...
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Features
What we have we hold
One of the side effects of the events of 11 September has been a flight from equities to cash by European institutional investors. Cash still represents the safest haven for funds in times of market uncertainty and, if managed actively, can produce modest but useful returns. Investors have moved assets ...
