All Features articles – Page 88
-
Features
Engaging with the engine of Europe
Of the nearly 270 signatories of the UN-backed Principles for Responsible Investment - which includes a pledge to be active, engaged shareholders - there are only six German pension funds. While the picture in neighbouring Austria, where only one fund has pledged allegiance, and Switzerland – with just three pension supporters – is comparably low, in terms of engagement, it is a matter of comparing apples with oranges.
-
Features
Focus Group: Feeling deflated
Participants in this month’s Focus Group are quite concerned about disinflationary pressures and the threat of deflation – especially in the euro-zone. Taking the euro-zone as a whole, the ‘core’ euro-zone, and the UK, respondents consider near-zero inflation as ‘inconceivable’ only in the latter. By contrast, four out of the 20 investors polled rate the risk of deflation as ‘high’ in the euro-zone as a whole.
-
Features
A model but no debate
One of the most outspoken critics of pensions accounting and the IASB is Tim Bush. Since 2011, Bush, a former ICAEW Council member, and self-confessed MBA-group-think-phobe, has taken the lead on governance and financial analysis at PIRC. His assessment of accountancy’s shortcomings is disarmingly blunt – not only have accountants lost the big picture, they have the detail wrong.
-
Features
Minister courts schemes on PIP
Danny Alexander, a senior Treasury minister in the UK government, has called on pension funds to invest more in infrastructure.
-
Features
Beyond the glib view
Credit rating agencies did not cover them- selves in glory in the financial crisis, particularly when it came to the rating of sub-prime credit instruments. While the main ones have taken steps to put their house in order, the EU has targeted the perceived mechanistic over-reliance of institutions on external ratings.
-
Features
Can small still be beautiful?
Despite the well-documented benefits of consolidation, there are still thousands of pension funds with assets under €1bn. Given that most of them cannot gain scale efficiencies, what can they do to make the best of their situation?
-
Features
Banking on emerging markets
Financial services may be a less stretched way to get exposure to the emerging consumer, writes David Turner. But will stockpicking shield investors from these markets’ credit crunches?
-
Features
Back to basics
The Herculean task of harmonising the funding rules for Europe’s defined benefit pension schemes has been officially decoupled from the planned IORP II Directive, to the relief of all those who would have to deal with the complex analytical framework needed to coordinate the rules. That framework would almost certainly have led to lower risk tolerance and a mass exodus from risk assets on the part of European pension funds.
-
Features
Investment therapy
René van Pommeren and Ada Wouters-Brongers of the Dutch physiotherapists’ pension fund tell Nina Röhrbein why their fund is unusual in the Netherlands
-
Features
Hot topics
IPE’s overview of the main regulatory and legislative developments affecting workplace pensions in key European countries
-
Features
A look over the horizon
In the second of a two-part round-up, Stephen Bouvier invites leading pensions accounting practitioners to identify the issues to watch in the year ahead
-
Features
Dutch design
The long and winding road of Dutch pension reforms has reached an interesting juncture: will the country stay true to its collective DB past, or turn into DC country?
-
Features
Rising sun or false dawn?
Daniel Ben-Ami looks back on a year of ‘Abenomics’, and finds optimism in the early hours of a new day for Japan’s economy and markets
-
Features
Cutting a tranche of yield
The current levels of default risk and the ability to tailor exposures to portfolio requirements make CLOs and CDOs potentially attractive for pension funds, writes Geoffrey Randells
-
Features
Let’s be clear on solutions
The growing number of services marketed to UK DB pension funds as ‘solutions’ means it is time for clear definitions, believes Magnus Spence
-
Features
Unique challenges of climate risk
Climate change risk means the role of the CIO will never be the same again, argues Julian Poulter
-
Features
Quarter century of a rising tide
Nina Röhrbein charts the main events, issues and trends of the past 25 years that have influenced the shape of environmental, social and governance investing
-
Features
Focus Group: Cautious optimism
Of the 34 investors polled for this month’s Focus Group, 56% are confident that the world economy and financial system is over the worst. As a proportion of the poll, this is up on last year, when the split was almost 50/50. The surprise, perhaps, is that the swing has not been stronger, given the stellar performance in 2013 of developed-market equities.
-
Features
A sovereign story: the Argentine experience
Rani Mina and Mark Stefanini argue that precedents set by the Argentine default experience could well be applied to future sovereign defaults including in the euro-zone
