All Features articles – Page 433
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Features
Californian colossus
How much can politics affect the investment decisions of a huge US pension fund in the public sector? A lot, judging by the latest example of the tensions between the board and the staff who manage Calpers, the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, the nation’s largest public pension fund. Following ...
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Features
Cash positions
The investment in commodities using derivatives such as total return swaps and futures means the fund has to keep a cash position in order to prevent leverage. This cash position has to be equal in size to the total commodities exposure of the derivatives. On a monthly basis PGGM’s positions ...
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Features
Waiting for members to catch up
By definition, IT jargon is at best confusing, at worst incomprehensible. While it’s in vogue to talk of going online and of e-enabling, what does it mean when a pension fund adds an online, interactive front end? And once that front end is enabled and online, what does it mean ...
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Features
Japan 'close to real crisis'
Although economic and interest rate forecasting is a complex affair even in the good times, when asked about Japan many fund managers, both bond and equity, shiver visibly. For global investors, investing in Japan has long been accompanied by a fair element of fear. It was back in 1990 that ...
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Features
Unaware of funds' hidden costs
Mutual funds investments is widespread among Belgian pension funds. Small pension funds believe that mutual funds meets their specific requirements better, at a law cost and with fiscal advantages. “Today it is quite is quite typical to hear pension funds sponsors saying they don’t pay any management fees because they ...
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Features
Myners says trading costs should be in fees
One of the most radical recommendations in the report by Gartmore chairman Paul Myners into the UK institutional investment industry is the proposal that fund managers should include trading commissions in their fees rather than passing the cost directly on to the pension fund, as is present practice. According to ...
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Features
Custody and rule of 'more sooner'
Any attempt to map the technological topography of the custody business five or even three years down the line is a fraught enterprise. Certainly, back in 1996, few custodians could anticipate the profound transformation wrought upon the commercial landscape as the internet came of age in the late 1990s, a ...
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Features
Karas reports directive findings
Othmar Karas, European Parliament rapporteur for the directive on occupational pensions, has a difficult month ahead. On March 21 he presented his report on the IORP (Institution for Occupational Retirement Provision) proposals of the European Commission to the Committee for Economic and Monetary Affairs (EMAC). However, he must now sit ...
