All Features articles – Page 79
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Features
High Yield Bonds Commentary: Happy to be bullish contrarians
Louis Cohen believes fundamentals remain firmly in place for spread compression in high-yield and explains why his team is unconcerned about being contrarians in this market
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Features
Diary of an Investor: When bigger isn’t better
These days, we at Wasserdicht Pension Funds are something of a rarity as the asset management bureau of a standalone company pension fund. Many of our brethren in the Netherlands have merged with a larger industry scheme or outsourced their investments to a fiduciary manager.
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Features
Holistic Balance Sheet: Damned if you do, damned if you don’t
The European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority (EIOPA) is often seen as the bogeyman of the industry, and many criticise even the smallest point put forward by the team surrounding chairman Gabriel Bernardino in Frankfurt.
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Features
Asset Allocation Fixed Income, Rates, Currencies: The big picture
Markets seem worried there is too much consensus around, and are nervously looking for hidden dangers. The bond market has sensibly priced in rate rises from the US Federal Reserve later this year but financial markets are generally still relying on plenty of loose money from elsewhere – namely, the European Central Bank (ECB) and Bank of Japan.
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Features
Pensions Accounting: A busy year scheduled
Another year, another 12 months of pensions accounting change and uncertainty. By any guess, 2015 promises to be a busy year for both defined benefit (DB) and defined contribution (DC) pension plan sponsors.
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Features
From our perspective: What do you need to shout about?
A recent trend in European occupational pensions has been towards increased transparency on costs – for instance, in the Netherlands and Switzerland. So for numerous European pension funds, measuring and presenting asset management cost data has become standard, even if the task seemed daunting for some at the outset. In Switzerland, managers unable to provide a total expense ratio are named in a separate ‘blacklist’ on the annual report
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Features
New ways to talk to your members
As European social welfare budgets come under pressure, persuading stakeholders of the need both to make retirement provision and to save towards it is becoming more crucial. Yet planning and funding a communications strategy to achieve this will be wasted if members neglect to read or simply ignore the literature. ...
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Features
Markets and pensions
Do financial markets reward countries that have a fully funded and mandatory second-pillar pension system? It is hard to say. But it’s clear they do not penalise countries that dismantle theirs.
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Features
Some Kodak moments
At the recent IPE Conference and Awards event, the audience voted on many questions but two really were extraordinary moments worth capturing.
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FeaturesInterview: Yngve Slyngstad, NBIM, Master of the universe
Yngve Slyngstad is one of the most influential asset owners in the world. As chief executive of Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM), he oversees the day-to-day affairs of the Government Pension Fund Global, the sovereign wealth fund that claims ownership of 1% of all equities worldwide – and 2.5% of those listed on European exchanges.
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Features
How we run our money: KZVK-VKPB
The two schemes are separate legal entities but are managed through a single fund and investment team, led by CIO Wolfram Gerdes
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Features
Focus on pension funds’ social purpose
One of the most important victories during the recent bargaining process over the revised IORP Directive is related to the fundamental nature of pension institutions.
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Features
Selfish EU governments put future of union at risk
Selfish EU governments are putting the continued survival of the European Union at risk, Ireland’s former taoiseach John Bruton has warned, as he told IPE the UK was likely to be the only outlier in a two-speed Europe.
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Features
A divergent opinion
If there is one big idea running markets around the world at the moment, it’s the ‘great policy divergence’. I’ve articulated the idea more than once: just last month I suggested it would take a “brave, brave soul to bet against the dollar”.
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Features
Supply, demand and the Juncker plan
A plan to meet the EU’s infrastructure needs was announced as 2014 drew to a close, with new European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker launching an investment fund that will be leveraged up to €300bn with institutional capital and guarantees aimed at reducing risk.
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Features
Frozen conflict
Since a 1964 report on road pricing in the UK, authored by one RJ Smeed, the idea of charging citizens for use of public highways has been repeatedly raised in Britain.
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Features
Investors are ‘ill prepared’ for climate change
Investors are ill prepared for a loss of asset value due to climate change, according to a poll conducted at the 2014 IPE Conference.At the event, 83% of delegates said they were badly or very badly prepared for such a development.
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Features
Cash is king
There is a reason why business people judge their success by money in the bank. Alistair Wittet asks why equity investors focus more on accounting values that obscure this crucial number
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Features
Savvy execution is the new silver bullet
In the third article in a new series, Pascal Blanqué and Amin Rajan argue that the ex post returns no longer match the ex ante promises
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Features
Letter from Brussels: Snail’s pace on new rules
An EU-wide framework for third-pillar personal pension products (PPPs) with an optional set of ‘second regime’ rules is inching forward.
