All Features articles – Page 94
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Features
Webb’s policy challenges
The achievement may seem modest, but September 2013 marks 40 months since Steve Webb became pensions minister, a junior post within the UK’s Department for Work and Pensions, but one with far-reaching influence over the design, structure and, by extension, asset allocation of occupational pensions in UK.
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Features
Conceptually challenged?
Back in April, the International Accounting Standards Board was debating the content of its discussion paper on the International Financial Reporting Standards conceptual framework.
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Features
Buyout now while stocks last
Pension longevity transfer, whether through full insurance buyouts, bulk annuities or longevity swaps, is still largely a UK business.
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Features
Buyout market in flux, but outlook rosy
Over the summer, the UK de-risking market has seen significant deal activity, as well as a number of important changes. Lucida, closed to new business since late 2012, was sold to rival Legal & General, while Goldman Sachs announced its intention to sell Rothesay Life, which itself acquired Paternoster less ...
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Features
Between a rock and a hard place
Investors are unsure whether the current market rally can outlive central bank action, argue Nicholas Lyster and Amin Rajan
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FeaturesBe smart with smart beta
Stefan Dunatov emphasises the importance of consistency between strategy, investment beliefs and implementation when exploiting techniques like smart beta
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Features
Focus Group: Pressure to find a balance
A majority of the respondents to this month’s Off The Record survey (60%) use LDI techniques to manage their liabilities. Of these, almost half (seven respondents) thought yields from core government bonds and rates on interest-rate swaps could fall even lower than they did in the summer of 2012.
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Features
IORP: what to expect this autumn
The calm comes before the storm. Almost two months of holiday have just gone by, and the European Commission is back this month with one major task – make a legislative proposal for the revised IORP Directive.
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Features
Top managers run more than €2.5trn in assets
The UK’s leading 100 asset managers now run more than €2.5trn in institutional assets, according to IPE’s annual ranking.
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Features
Rating hybrids
Issuance of hybrid capital in Europe surged at the start of the year and is likely to remain elevated in the near term. Taron Wade discusses how such instruments are rated and why new issuers are getting involved
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FeaturesA high-yield lesson from history
Richard Ryan warns investors not to respond to apparently tight spreads in investment-grade bonds by simply stretching for the extra 260 basis points available from high yield
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Features
German investors defy tough year
Frank Schnattinger outlines the findings of IPE’s seventh annual survey of German institutional investors
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Features
Insurers deal with low yields
Writing from an equity research perspective, John Hocking outlines an approach to re-risking that could benefit insurers both with Solvency II and in the eyes of rating agencies
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Features
APG looks to swap futures to reduce costs
APG, the €336bn pensions provider and asset manager, is studying the possibility of using swap futures – a derivative instrument under development in the US – as a means of cutting the cost of initial margins in central clearing.
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Features
The public sin
Last spring, Christian Aid argued that the entry of pension funds into the soft-commodities derivatives market had contributed to recent hikes in food prices.
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Features
Smarter outsourcing
The term ‘outsourcing’ first came to light in 1979, and gained popularity in business by the 1990s as companies sought supply-chain efficiency and to concentrate on their core activity. The notion also gained currency in pension fund management.
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Features
Keep it simple, stupid
Nina Röhrbein speaks to Peter Hansson, CEO of Swedish pension fund, Sparinstitutens Pensionskassa, about how how he keeps it simple
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Features
Is history quietly repeating itself?
With the system already as heavily leveraged as it was in 2007, markets are hanging on every word from Ben Bernanke. Dan James thinks this only adds to the feeling of déjà vu
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Features
My way, not the highway
Jeroen Dijsselbloem was never going to have an easy time as the Dutch minister of finance, thanks to the country’s slowing economic growth and the need for cuts to bring deficit spending under the European Union’s 3% threshold.
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Features
If it looks like a duck
Hybrid corporate bonds are taking off as investors scramble for yield. But Martin Steward wonders if the hybdridity balance is shifting against investors
