All Features articles – Page 59
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Features
Commodity prices on the rebound
After hitting a low earlier this year, are commodity prices on the brink of a sustained rise? Daniel Ben-Ami investigates
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Features
Switzerland's pensions debate: Negative for longer
Switzerland is engaged in a debate not just about its pension reforms, but also wider issues of intergenerational fairness and the stability of the second-pillar pension system
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Features
Diary of an Investor: War stories
Last month I joined our co-operation partners at PensionKøbenhavn in Copenhagen for a private round table of institutional investors discussing real assets
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Features
Securities Lending: More work to be done
Brian Bollen examines the resilience of securities lending as it evolves to meet new challenges and demands in the financial industry
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FeaturesHow we run our money: Unilever Dutch pension funds
Rob Kragten, CEO, and Michael Kaal, director of finance and risk at the Unilever Dutch pension funds, tell Carlo Svaluto Moreolo about risk management and collective defined contribution
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Features
Focus Group: Warm on EM investment
Just three of the investors polled for this month’s Focus Group have increased their allocation to emerging and frontier markets in the past three years
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Features
Emerging markets make no sense
After poor performances over the past three years, which led to large outflows, EM assets are finding their way back into institutional portfolios
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Features
UK's LPGS: Mixed reviews for final regulations
Guidance on new investment regulations for UK local government pension schemes (LPGS) has been welcomed for changing the course of asset pooling “for the better”
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Features
Regulation: Pension funds join fray on systemic risk
The consultation by the Financial Stability Board (FSB) on its proposals to address structural vulnerabilities for asset management activities has set off a skirmish between those institutions wanting mandatory stress-tests to include pension and sovereign wealth funds (SWFs), and those that do not.
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FeaturesRegulatory monoculture and systemic risk
What is the connection between tropical fruit and systemic risk? In 1990, when East German citizens demonstrated for freedom and democracy, the banana became a potent symbol of the basic level of prosperity to which they aspired
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FeaturesESG: Green bonds get G20 boost
The green bond market has had a strong run in the wake of the December 2015 Paris climate-change agreement
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FeaturesIPE Expectations Indicator October 2016
The current survey period captured the end of the summer. The number of managers voicing concern about interest rate policy is high. However, the current environment has yet to reflect the alarms of many major investors and the survey results indicate most managers expect little dramatic near-term movement. Whether it is not yet the season for action, or investors expect the status quo to continue, is yet unclear.
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Features
Danish Reform: The 2025 Plan
The government of Denmark – a country ranked, according to the Melbourne Mercer Global Pensions index, as having the best pension system in the world – is planning to push funded pensions coverage into new territory.
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Features
Pensions Accounting: Numerology signals
Seventy. Zero. Minus-80. We are probably going to be seeing and hearing a lot about those numbers in the coming weeks. Just as 666 is said to represent The Beast, 70, zero and minus-80 look set to epitomise monster pension deficits and the dawning chasm between IAS 19 scheme deficits and the reality of stewarding a pension scheme.
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Features
Ahead of the Curve: Time to embrace robots?
Robotics and automation are no longer sci-fi, they are a fast-growing and profitable sector, say Johan Van Der Biest and Rudi Van den Eynde
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Features
Nordic Asset Allocation: Finding the answers from within
The increased use of internal investment resources by Nordic investors is a challenge for asset managers, according to Albert Løchte Jensen
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Features
Asset Allocation: The big picture
Eight years since the banking system threatened collapse, financial markets are still dominated by central banks. Though macro fundamentals, and geopolitics, still have the capacity to influence flows, interest rates are largely being driven by the central banks’ actions.
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Features
Focus Group: Too much debt around
Just over half of the respondents to this month’s focus group are restructuring, or planning to restructure, their fixed-income portfolio. Of these, 10 are moving towards a more active management.
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Features
Governance Practices: Between rhetoric and reality
Without behavioural change, recent adaptations in the governance practices of European pension plans merely amount to re-spraying an old car when an entirely new model is needed, according to Sally Bridgeland and Amin Rajan
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Features
Returns: Bonds boost interim results
Returns in the low single-digits were common across the northern European pensions landscape in the first half of 2016, as bonds rallied while equities slumped.
