All articles by James Mawson – Page 4
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UK to raise stakeholder pension charges
UK – The UK government has raised the charges on stakeholder pension to 1.5% for the first 10 years and said other, proposed low-cost savings products would have a similar maximum rate.
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TUC pensions rally to draw only thousands
UK- Thousands are expected to attend the Trades Union Congress rally on Saturday calling for employers and government to pay up for pensions, although this is considerably less than the millions attending similar rallies in other European countries in the last year.
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Wedgwood's pensions contributions hits earnings
IRELAND – Waterford Wedgwood has paid off a quarter of its €130m pension deficit but admitted the higher than expected pension costs affected earnings.
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Fortis fights to keep final salary pension fund open
BELGIUM – Fortis Bank is increasing employee contributions to its final salary pension schemes and cutting the weighting in equities rather than moving to an average-salary or closing to new members, despite a near doubling in costs in two years.
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Opra finds 'inappropriate action' by 34 UK funds
UK – The UK’s Occupational Pensions Regulatory Authority is investigating 34 retirement schemes for “inappropriate action” following their minimum funding review valuations, which in some cases have shown the schemes are more than 10% underfunded.
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Shell could face Dutch funds backlash
NETHERLANDS – Royal Dutch/Shell is possibly facing a revolt by Dutch pension funds at its AGM on June 28, according to the corporate governance manager at PGGM.
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Boeing to invest €831m in fund company start-ups
US – Boeing’s $36bn (€29.9bn) pension fund will invest $1bn to start-up and ethnic-minority fund managers with less than $2bn under management because returns are higher there.
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GES allows Nestle and Nomura into the ethical fold
SWEDEN – GES Investment Services, a Sweden-based socially responsible investments consultancy with clients managing €60bn of assets, has revised its exclusion list following improvements at Nestlé and Nomura but barred three other companies.
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Dutch pensions supervisor suffers court defeat
NETHERLANDS – The Dutch Pension and Insurance Chamber (PVK) has been found jointly liable for damages likely to be more than €80m over the collapse of life assurer Vie d’Or in the mid-1990s.
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China welfare fund to grant second lot of mandates
GLOBAL – European fund managers are eyeing the second tranche of mandates worth a fifth of the 132.5 billion yuan (13.2 billion euro) China National Social Security pension fund to be announced later this year.
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UK construction companies face £500m deficit
UK - Up to £500 million would be wiped off the balance sheets of Britain's quoted construction companies if accounting standard FRS17 was adopted now, according to consultancy RSM Robson Rhodes.
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Lothian cuts UK equities weighting and Putnam
UK - The £1.9bn (€2.9bn) Lothian Pension Scheme has cut its UK equities weighting by 16.9 percentage points, about £320m, in its main fund, in a further sign of a shift of defined benefits schemes away from the asset class, which WM Company predicted would lead to a £174bn shift ...
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Fefsi to lobby EU for equal rights
BELGIUM – The Fédération Européenne des Fonds et Sociétés d’Investissement (Fefsi), the pan-European funds trade association, is to lobby the European Commission and Parliament to gain equal treatment for collective investment schemes with life and pension vehicles to provide retirement provision.
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WH Smith trustees block private equity deal
UK - Pension trustees at WH Smith are effectively blocking the £940m (€1.4bn) approach by Permira to take the company private.
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Ruffer boutique targets pension funds
UK- Ruffer Investment Management LLP, a London boutique with £800m (€1.2bn), is to open subscriptions next week for its first closed-ended, UK-listed investment company for pension funds.
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BA funds to mull opening to external funds
UK - The £9bn (€13.6bn) internally-managed British Airways pension schemes are considering whether to open to third parties, and Hermes Pensions Management has said it would look at investing in them if this happened.
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IFC backs Raiffeisen growth with €200m
AUSTRIA - The International Finance Corporation, the private sector financing arm of the World Bank, has provided Raiffeisen Zentralbank Osterreich (RZB) with €200m to support its growth in central and eastern Europe.
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UK to remove indexation of DC annuities
UK – Pension fund consultants have broadly welcomed the UK government’s plan to remove inflation indexation from defined contribution schemes and said new US providers could enter the annuity market.
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KBCAM offers high yield equity fund
IRELAND – KBCAM, the Irish subsidiary of Brussels-based KBC Asset Management, has targeted local pension funds and charities with a high yield equity fund as its fears grow of a bond market bubble collapse.
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Hermes names COO and eyes expansion
UK - Hermes Pensions Management, the 45 billion-pound (68 billion-euro) UK-based investment manager owned by the BT pension fund, has named a new chief operating officer as it prepares to offer more of its products to co-investors.
