All Features articles – Page 95
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Features
Attention moves to portability
Eight years have passed since the European Commission introduced its first proposals on a Pension Portability Directive, and yet, so far, there has been no sign of this coming to fruition. Back in 2005, it introduced a proposal for a directive aiming to improve the portability of supplementary pension rights.
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Features
The case for the investment book of record
It is essential for investment decisions to be based on accurate and complete information, but obtaining that in the form of an investment book of record is easier for some asset managers than others, according to John Mayr
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Features
The solutions business
‘We’re in the solutions business!’ These were the words I was greeted with at the Worldwide Institutional Investing Conference inLondon recently. A fiduciary manager was presenting his vision for pension funds, and all kinds of jargon were thrown out – integral fiduciary management, partial mandate outsourcing, delegated CIOs and segregated diversified growth fund mandates.
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Features
Defining the trustee chair
The rise of LDI, market turbulence and regulatory challenges have all helped to change the role of the trustee chair, according to Gail Moss
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Features
Directing the directive
Cécile Sourbès asks Matti Leppälä, secretary-general and chief executive of PensionsEurope, to discuss the next steps for the revised IORP Directive
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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
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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
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
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
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
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
Unease over debt and politics
This month’s Off The Record poll reveals that, while some of the fear has been taken out of the euro-zone situation over recent months, no-one feels certain we are past the worst. Asked to identify the biggest risk to the integrity of the zone, a few cited threats such as ...
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Features
Rock ‘n’ roll yield
Music publishing rights are a proven inflation-sensitive cash-flow asset, and Martin Steward finds that fast-changing music consumption habits are generating not threats, but opportunities
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Features
Accounting: Hoogervorst decrees
Unless you are an actuary, trustee or policy wonk, it is unlikely that the IASB’s conceptual framework project – the basis for International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) – is high on your agenda.
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Features
We were all caught naked
IPE hosted Stanford Business School’s Anat Admati this month, in town promoting The Bankers’ New Clothes, the well-received book she co-wrote with Martin Hellwig of the Max Planck Institute.
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FeaturesUnlocking alpha
New statistical techniques and the computing power to put them to work is opening a space for effective factor modelling of hedge funds, writes Robert J Frey
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Features
Motherhood and apple pie
Perhaps it should not be a too much of a surprise that 68% of Swiss people voted in a national referendum in March in favour of a motion against ‘rip-off’ executive salaries.
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Features
Leave asset mix to pension funds
Despite Kees van Dijkhuizen’s conclusion that there is support for increased involvement from Dutch institutional investors for financing residential mortgages through state-guaranteed bonds, the IMF seems to have vindicated pension funds’ initial reluctance.
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Features
The banker blame game
As if pension funds and other institutional shareholders did not already have enough on their plates, the calls on them to engage more with companies have been increasing in volume over the last few years.
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Features
The bankers’ new clothes … yet to be made
Bankers have, in recent years, become the butt of many jokes and the scapegoats for all that went wrong in the financial crisis.
