Latest analysis – Page 47
-
Opinion Pieces
Rethink on alternatives
After five strong years in the equity markets, some US pension funds are disappointed by the performance of their alternative assets and moving out, while others are keeping them but focusing on de-risking.
-
Features
Pensions cart before the horse
It may come a surprise that the UK, Europe’s leading pension market by assets, has been one of the least innovative in terms of benefit design – something the present government is keen to rectify.
-
Features
What price opportunity?
An overhaul of the Norwegian oil fund’s active management approach should free it from most of its current investment restrictions, according to a report co-authored by the former chief executive of the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB), David Denison.
-
Features
Can the UK import concepts from abroad?
Government plans for pensions caused ripples in the industry after the official opening of the 2014-15 UK parliamentary session.
-
Features
All new IAS19: the verdict
The International Accounting Standards Board issued revisions to its pensions-accounting standard IAS19 in 2011. But has the project delivered the goods? Stephen Bouvier asks KPMG’s Naz Peralta about the evidence
-
Features
Inflection point of emerging markets
In this article, the first in a series delving into a new study, Nick Lyster and Amin Rajan ask whether emerging markets are becoming yesterday’s story or are merely rebooting their growth engines before the next leap
-
Opinion Pieces
What's outstanding
The EU’s institutional world is starting a new term. Now that the parliamentary elections are over, the commissioners have only until the end of October before their replacements take up office. With the increasing presence of euro-sceptic MEPs, it could be a stressful five years ahead.
-
Opinion Pieces
On track with 401(k)
Individual retirement savings accounts (IRAs) have been helping US workers navigate the ups and downs of Wall Street since the 2008 financial crisis. IRAs and employer-sponsored defined contribution (DC) plans grew to $6.5trn and $5.9trn (€4.8trn and €4.3trn), respectively, at year-end 2013, up from $5.6trn and $5trn the previous year, according to data in the 2014 Investment Company Fact Book.
-
Features
Falling (further) behind
“Pensions are safe”, Germany’s one-time pensions minister, Norbert Blüm, famously said in the 1990s. That ill-judged statement still influences discussions about the German state pension system even today.
-
Opinion Pieces
Lighting dark corners
The European Commission’s planned revisions to rules on shareholder rights aim to encourage a culture of long-term equity investment across the EU.
-
Opinion Pieces
TIAA-CREF expands
Six years after taking the helm as president and CEO of the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association – College Retirement Equities Fund (TIAA-CREF), Roger Ferguson announced the acquisition of Nuveen Investments in April for $6.25bn (€4.5bn), including debt.
-
Features
Warning: contents may vary
Michel Barnier, the European Commissioner for the internal market, seems determined to end his period in office with a blizzard of activity ahead of this month’s European Par- liament elections. The (much watered down) draft directive for IORP II and a paper on long-term financing of the European economy were closely followed by a draft directive revising shareholder rights legislation, complete with a controversial proposal for a mandatory say-on-pay vote at EU listed companies.
-
Features
The mission for pensions reform
Eleven years have passed since the European pensions industry digested, welcomed and, in some cases, bemoaned the Directive for Institutions for Occupational Retirement Provision, or IORP I as it became known. This year, the European Commission once again took up the arduous task of updating this Directive, publishing its legislative agenda before submitting it to the European trialogue machine.
-
Features
Pension perceptions programme puts pension funds in control
Following the successful completion of an initial development stage in 2012-13, IPE has now announced the full European roll-out of the Pension Fund Perception
-
Features
Outward bound
We seem to get out of the office so rarely these days. All of us spend more time dealing with electronic communications that simple, face-to-face contact takes place less often than it used to.
-
Features
Exploding the asset allocation myth
The old dictum of ‘fix asset allocation and the numbers will follow’ no longer works, says Amin Rajan, and a world-class strategy is now worthless without world-class execution
-
Opinion Pieces
The countdown begins
The countdown has started. By the end of May, 751 members of the European Parliament will have been selected by as many of the 400m electors who care enough to vote.
-
Opinion Pieces
Glide paths and targets
Target-date funds (TDFs) are so popular in the US that even the nation’s largest defined contribution (DC) pension system – the $400bn (€290bn) Thrift Savings Plan, the 401(k)-style retirement plan for federal staff – is thinking of making its TDF the default option for new employees. But with an increasingly diverse array of TDFs, concern is growing among plan sponsors and advisers about the level of fiduciary responsibility involved.
-
Features
Back to basics
The Herculean task of harmonising the funding rules for Europe’s defined benefit pension schemes has been officially decoupled from the planned IORP II Directive, to the relief of all those who would have to deal with the complex analytical framework needed to coordinate the rules. That framework would almost certainly have led to lower risk tolerance and a mass exodus from risk assets on the part of European pension funds.
-
Features
IORP II: Stand by for a saga
Pity the poor European Commission when it announces its long-awaited plans for a complete upgrade of EU rules governing occupational pensions.
