Latest analysis – Page 42
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Features
Auto-enrolment in Italy: An unlikely champion
Italy tried automatic enrolment in 2007 and it failed. Workers were given six months to decide whether their severance pay money, or TFR, should be kept on their company’s books or transferred to a second-pillar pension fund
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Features
Focus Group: Future threats (and delights)
For one-quarter of respondents to this month’s Focus Group, the biggest credible threat to the global economy and financial markets in 2016 is the bursting of quantitative easing-fuelled asset price bubbles. “Inflationary effects can quite suddenly bring markets down, if confidence is lost,” says the CEO of a Dutch fund.
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FeaturesFrom our perspective: Numerical expectations
What’s in a number? Quite a lot can rest on the choice of a single figure when it represents a pension fund’s long-term return assumptions. Much rides on these assumptions, which affect current and future contribution rates. There is a great deal to lose if the balance between current and future generations gets out of kilter.
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Features
UK Local Government Pension Scheme: The only certainty is change
After years of uncertainty, UK chancellor of the exchequer George Osborne has signalled his desire for radical structural change among the UK’s local authority pension funds.
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Features
Capital Markets Union: A single market for capital
Pledging to “knock down barriers” and let capital flow freely across the European Union, Jonathan Hill, commissioner for financial stability, announced in September how he would achieve the European Commission’s pledge for a Capital Markets Union (CMU).
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Features
The perils and promise of financial repression
In this first article in a series on a new survey, Pascal Blanqué and Amin Rajan argue that quantitative easing leaves pension plans at the wrong end of an arbitrary redistribution of wealth
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Features
Finland: Funds defend investment stance
Finnish pension funds Valtion Eläkerahasto (VER) and Ilmarinen have defended their levels of investment in the local economy in the face of concerns that Finnish institutions are becoming less able to invest in domestic equities.
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Opinion Pieces
Letter from Brussels: Focus on low returns
Dismally low returns on EU pension fund investments over 15 years? The allegation comes in a study by Better Finance, the European Federation of Investors & Financial Services Users. The report, Pensions Savings: The Real Return, points to excessive fees, points to other charges, and badly framed taxation rules, as the culprits.
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Opinion Pieces
Letter from the US: Lower expectations
Most US state retirement systems are cutting their investment return predictions. But this is still not enough, according to critics, and a minority of public pension funds are retaining optimistic assumptions and aggressive strategies.
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Opinion Pieces
Letter from the US: From small beginnings
The US private retirement annuity market is quite small. But it is likely to grow dramatically thanks to the convergence of various factors
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Features
Millennials: Cafe culture comes to Wall Street
Millennials are already changing the face of business and lifestyle. Christopher O’Dea looks at how this new-technology era is affecting economies and investment
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Opinion PiecesLetter from Brussels: Pressure builds on tax havens
Brussels’ financial focus is on aggressive corporate tax planning and the related question of tax havens. This concerns the hedge fund ‘passport’ rights to do business across the EU and compliance of the offshore jurisdictions where they are domiciled to EU norms.
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Features
From our perspective: Back to the future?
IPE’s 18-year history has been one of the expansion of funded pension systems. While countries like France have held out in favour of répartition, others have expanded the development of funded pension systems
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Features
Nordic investors change approach
Market volatility and the pursuit of yield have been a concern for pension funds since the 2008 market crash. But while the end of 2014 saw solid equity returns and fixed income holdings artificially inflated by lower yields, the first six months of 2015 saw markets hit by uncertainty
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Features
Pensions Accounting: A five-year plan
It’s that time again. The International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) has just launched a public consultation on its work plan for the next three years
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Features
Interview: Rolling back the barriers
Liam Kennedy discusses the role of research in institutional investment with Noël Amenc, who stepped down as director of the EDHEC-Risk Institute earlier this year
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Features
Fighting a losing battle?
The Swedish government has been considering the future of its AP Fund system since 2011 but, until recently, with little discernible progress
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Features
From Our Perspective: Who’s watching the watchers?
In some countries they are accused of heavy-handedness; in others they seem content to play a light-touch role. Either way, European pension regulation remains as diverse as the continent’s pension systems. The IORP II Directive, like its 2004 counterpart will be interpreted and implemented differently across the EU member states; harmonisation of regulation has not led to a harmonisation of regulators.
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Features
Reviving the Celtic tiger
The biggest challenge facing Eugene O’Callaghan, director of the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund, is how to avoid pricing himself out of a recovering Irish market
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FeaturesInterview: The view from Copenhagen
Rachel Fixsen spoke to Carsten Stendevad about his vision for Denmark’s labour market pension fund, ATP, and his first two years as CEO
