All Features articles – Page 99
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Features
Cross-border lessons
The 2010 comedy film Rien à Déclarer focused on the rivalry between a pair of customs officers either side of the pre-Schengen Franco-Belgian frontier.
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Features
Focus Group: Shaky confidence returns
Some 43% of those taking part in this month’s Off The Record survey were quite confident that the world economy and financial system are now over the worst.
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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.”
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Diary of an Investor: Cold weather, great pay
February is not the time to visit Toronto. Stepping outside the airport I am reminded how seriously cold it gets in Canada. Winters are mostly pretty mild in the Netherlands so we don’t get to skate on frozen canals like in the Old Master paintings.
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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
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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.
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Ireland’s challenge
Ireland’s presidency of the European Council is an opportunity for the country to showcase the progress it has made in repairing its finances and its economy since the bailout at the end of 2010.
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Don’t hope for a Basel III scenario for IORP II
After the Basel Committee unveiled a softer version of the Basel III measures for banking institutions in January, the European pensions industry saw the watered-down legislation as a glimmer of hope. Many crossed their fingers that Brussels would take a similar approach to regulatory frameworks currently being developed for insurance ...
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Features
AIFMD: the rush to regulate
With its mid-year implementation deadline looming, Giuseppe Rumi and Giorgio Tosetti update us on the state of play for the Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive
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The middle way
Gail Moss outlines how public sector pension entities can get the best out of the procurement process
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Relationship issues
The demand from pension funds for greater transparency from their custodians is growing more urgent, finds Iain Morse
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Features
Implementing the impossible
The boxer, Muhammad Ali, once said: “Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they’ve been given than to explore the power they have to change it.”
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Which way to go?
Nina Röhrbein spoke with Eddie Dahlberg, who is responsible for Volvo’s pledge to provide pensions
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Diary of an Investor: Early retirement? No thanks!
One day during our Christmas break, my wife was horrified to read in the daily paper that retirement ages are going up. Jeanette is a French national, even though she has lived most of her life outside of France. ‘There won’t be enough jobs for the young people and the elderly will be forced to work until they drop,’ she said.
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Features
Lies, damned lies and valuations
The Barclays UK Government Inflation-Linked Bond index experienced a 13 standard-deviation event on 10 January.
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FeaturesThe correlation myth
Patrick Burke d’Orey argues that factor analysis shows that correlations are not at all-time highs – and that even in 2008 there was wide dispersion in pair-wise factor correlations
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Features
Contagious junk?
Speculation that European downgrades could squeeze EM corporate bond issuers is overblown, finds Martin Steward
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Features
Focus Group: Political considerations
Two-thirds of respondents to this month’s Off The Record survey have, over the past five years, taken action in their investments to try to adapt to a preponderance of political risk in financial markets.
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Features
Sweden’s buffer funds come out swinging
Future-proofing the Swedish pension system is a key item on the political agenda, following the conclusion of a review of the AP buffer funds commissioned by the department for finance and one by parliament.
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Features
Risk ahead!
“When we understand that slide, we’ll have won the war.” General Stanley McChrystal is supposed to have said this in 2010 when commenting on a PowerPoint slide outlining the risks of the US army’s engagement in Afghanistan.
