All Features articles – Page 98
-
Features
Pensions Accounting: A history lesson
In order to understand why the IASB and the IFRS Interpretations Committee will struggle to identify a principle behind the IAS19 discount-rate objective, let us delve into the history of how the board’s predecessor, the International Accounting Standards Committee, arrived at the AA-corporate bond rate ‘rule’.
-
Features
Swimming against the tide
While the entire European pension industry seems to be fretting about the implications of a Solvency II-style directive for pension funds, in the far northeastern corner of Europe, solvency takes on an entirely different meaning.
-
Features
Britain and Europe
The UK has squandered its fiscal strength relative to the rest of Europe, argues Holger Schmieding – and talk of a ‘Brexit’ will only make things worse
-
Features
The business of uncertainty
Lynn Strongin Dodds takes a look at a sector beset by uncertainty over regulations, profitability and dividends
-
Features
Currency war? What war?
Two-thirds of respondents to this month’s Off The Record survey do not believe there was a genuine ‘currency war’ on, with about half of these believing it to be all media hype.
-
Features
Whistling in the dark
Starting this month, the Dutch are implementing wholesale benefit cuts. It’s brutal. The Dutch central bank has calculated that the cuts will affect 2m active employees, 1.1m retirees and 2.5m deferred pension plan participants – well over a third of the total population of 16.7m.
-
Features
Developments in Dutch pooling
Recent bilateral agreements and regulatory developments are making the Netherlands more attractive as a jurisdiction for asset pooling, according to Wilfried Mulder and Mischa Muntinga
-
Features
The EM lending gap
Bank lending to emerging markets is falling sharply – but David Creighton writes that the growth in bond issuance isn’t filling the lending gap
-
Features
The end of fees as we know them
Taking to the stage on the first day of the National Association of Pension Funds Investment Conference in early March, Paul Marsh of the London Business School unwittingly set the tone for the rest of the event.
-
Features
‘Great rotation’, or liquidity-trap trade?
There’s a puzzle at the heart of this month’s Strategy Review on US equities. All four interviewees run defensive portfolios – one is so bearish, he expects a re-rating to 10 times earnings – but have struggled to keep pace with a rally led by quality defensives.
-
Features
Scrutiny: it’s here to stay
If you were to organise a people’s initiative against being ripped off, you might be guaranteed some measure of success. The fact that the people allegedly doing the ripping off are highly-paid executives makes the issue all the more piquant.
-
Features
Innovate to survive
As business becomes thinner and specialisation becomes crucial, Iain Morse reports on the Norwegian custody market
-
Features
It’s a war out there
Anthony Harrington finds optimism among active currency managers, and that a top-down discretionary approach might be best-suited to surviving and thriving through the ‘currency wars’
-
Features
A tale of two jurisdictions
Expatriate pensions are still an offshore game, and Luxembourg and Liechtenstein are vying for supremacy, writes Gail Moss
-
-
Features
Why say no to ownership?
Nina Röhrbein asks Martin Clarke, executive director at the UK’s Pension Protection Fund and UKSIF chairman, about ownership duties and opportunities
-
Features
Indexation ambition
Nina Röhrbein interviews Bernard Walschots, CIO of Rabobank’s Dutch pension fund
-
Features
Pensions Accounting: Discount-rate saga runs
Back in January, this column posed a simple question: Can they fix it? The ‘it’ was the so-called six-A discount rate question.
-
Features
Banks back in favour
Fund managers are overweight banking stocks for the first time since 2007. But Maha Khan Phillips finds that not everyone is convinced that now is the time to buy
-
Features
Not too hot, not too cold
“The Union has today set itself a new strategic goal for the next decade: to become the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world, capable of sustainable economic growth with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion.”
