Latest analysis – Page 46
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Features
Vive la répartition
While she might have abolished peculiarities such as yellow car headlights and the old-style caps of the gendarmerie, France’s pension system, based on répartition (redistribution), remains as distinct as ever.
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Features
I need a dollar
Risk assets had a terrible time early in October. What was all the fuss about? Soft US retail sales data? Hardly. The geopolitical background? Unlikely. Weak numbers out of Germany and a lack of faith in the ECB? Jitteriness at the prospect of the Fed packing up QE? Quite possibly.
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Features
Interview, Gabriel Bernardino: We are listening
Gabriel Bernadino, chairman of EIOPA, tells Taha Lokhandwala why his organisation wants stakeholders to challenge the ideas in its consultation on regulatory frameworks
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FeaturesFrom Our Perspective: Ready for action
Industry figures like Roger Urwin of Towers Watson have long advocated that pension funds should use their fee budget effectively according to their size and scale, perhaps foregoing costly alternative strategies in favour of recruiting in-house staff.
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Opinion Pieces
Letter from the US: End to pensions taboo
Pension reform is no longer a taboo subject for voters: this is one of the outcomes of the 4 November mid-term elections.
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Features
Climate risk takes centre stage
This September’s United Nations Climate Change summit in New York combined political and show business razzmatazz with the gravitas of investors like Mats Andersson, CEO of Sweden’s AP4 pension fund, who addressed the UN General Assembly.
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Opinion Pieces
Letter from Brussels: Capital market union
The capital market union (CMU) is a new emphasis in Brussels and Jonathan Hill, the new Commissioner for financial services, mentioned the subject repeatedly at his initial vetting by MEPs.
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Opinion Pieces
Letter from the US: Pensions and start-ups
Can pension funds play a greater role in stimulating start-ups and economic growth? Some US politicians think so and are trying to deploy public retirement assets for this goal. But critics claim that results have been disappointing so far, mostly because pension funds invest through private equity funds that demand very high fees. So a new idea is gaining support – pension funds investing directly in private companies, cutting out intermediaries.
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Opinion Pieces
Woody at work
Woody is the villain of the new book The US Pension Crisis – What We Need to Do Now to Save America’s Pensions, by Ronald Ryan. According to Ryan, Woody is the “pension pencil” or “the weapon of mass destruction in financial America”, used since the 1990s for accounting gimmicks that conceal the real financial situation of pension funds.
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Opinion Pieces
A stinging rebuke
The private pension product sector is “persistently the worst-performing retail services market of all throughout the European Union”, according to the European Commission, as cited in a new report.
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AnalysisAnalysis: Hedge funds brace for CalPERS fallout
Hedge funds are facing a ‘critical period’ in wake of US pension fund’s decision to divest from asset class, writes Christopher O’Dea
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Features
I’ll have my bond; I will not hear thee speak
The court scene from The Merchant of Venice dramatises the balance between justice and equity. Argentina’s conflict with its ‘holdout’ creditors, which led to default on its New York-law bonds, suggests that it ought to be required reading for sovereign debt investors.
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Features
The shore will turn the ship
After five years of intense negotiations and acrimonious disputes, the Dutch have finally settled on a new financial framework (FTK), expected to take effect, at least in part, as of January 2015.
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Features
Pension pot pitfalls
Like compulsory voting, compulsory pensions have not taken off to a great extent: Australia practices both, Switzerland has had mandatory supplementary pensions since the 1980s, and pensions are compulsory for most workers through collective labour agreements in the Netherlands.
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Features
The changing bond climate
Green bonds, until very recently a niche product, are gaining in prominence as the market grows above $500bn (€369bn).
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Features
The Irish word for ‘appropriate’
Following a recent High Court ruling, Ireland’s pensions industry has found itself questioning whether the current minimum funding standard (MFS) for schemes can endure.
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Opinion Pieces
Learning disabilities
Who would invest in a sector that has lagged the Stoxx 600 by 1.1% in overall growth and by 0.3% in EPS growth for the last 19 years on an annual basis?
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Features
Russia in the limelight
With or without the situation in Ukraine, the shooting down of flight MH17 and international sanctions, the economic outlook for Russia is questionable. We asked two respected observers whether pension funds should pull out
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Opinion Pieces
“The best CDC design is collective implementation with clear ownership rights”
Designing a robust retirement income solution is not easy – as with most complex issues, there are no silver bullets, only trade-offs. The challenge is to balance life-long retirement income stability with financial risk-taking, all within a framework that is understandable, transparent and fair and hence can be trusted by members.
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Features
Buy-and-hold birth pangs in Asia
In this second article on a new study, Nick Lyster and Amin Rajan debate that the notions of risk premia and time premia are slow to take root in the predominant savings culture of emerging markets.
