Latest analysis – Page 49
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Features
Variable solutions
Europe is moving slowly and deliberately away from defined benefit pensions to approaches that, if well considered, might prove a sustainable model for workplace retirement provision.
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Features
Haggling with the hedge funds
For this month’s Focus Group Survey, we asked 19 readers about hedge funds.
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Features
Expect more scrutiny on systemic relevance
A transformation is taking place in the five-year performance track records of countless investment funds and strategies as this year fades out and the impact of the market collapse of late 2008 is erased.
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Features
The UK fiduciary duty straitjacket
Should trustees consider environmental concerns, or even more widespread systemic issues, when investing on behalf of their beneficiaries?
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Features
New combatants in an uncertain war
Despite the single market Commisoner Michel Barnier’s recent concession that the European Commission would not attempt to publish a draft of the revised IORP Directive with its controversial capital requirements attached, the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority (EIOPA) is pushing ahead with several consultations on the holistic balance sheet (HBS)
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Features
Closing questions
David Paterson, former head of corporate governance at the UK’s powerful National Association of Pension Funds (NAPF) who retired in October 2013, held the last phase of his post during the Shareholder Spring of institutional investor action in 2012, when governance clashes were front page news.
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Opinion Pieces
A phoney war for KID
A phoney war is in operation. No guns are being fired. No bombs falling. But there a number of indications of an arms race over the matter of a simple two page information document known as KID – and its possible extension to cover the occupational pension sector.
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Opinion Pieces
Too big to fail?
Are US asset management firms ‘too big to fail’? In other words, do they represent systemic risks similar to those posed by the largest banks, so much that they must be subject to ‘enhanced’ supervision?
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Features
Spotlight on money doctors
Holding investment consultants to account is a healthy exercise. And indeed, one recent study on investment consultants’ recommendations has attracted headlines and controversy.
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Features
Denmark narrowly retains global supremacy
Denmark’s pensions supremacy was once again confirmed in October with the publication of the fifth annual Melbourne Mercer Global Pension index.
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Features
Change is afoot in the corridors of Brussels
Not a month goes by now, it seems, without some new major development in EU policy. First came the final reporting guidelines for the Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive (AIFMD), published by the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) in September.
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Features
State of flux continues for Dutch
With the recent announcement of proposals for a “middle way”, Jetta Klijnsma, state secretary at the Ministry of Social Affairs, seemed to have turned the corner in the ongoing debate over the revised financial assessment framework (FTK). The pensions sector has now shown a broad consensus about the new direction.
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Opinion Pieces
A Lithuanian bottleneck
Yet another Brussels go-slow on IORP II legislative revisions? Yes, but it’s not just rules for occupational pensions. A let’s-put-off-until-tomorrow syndrome is hammering swathes of financial legislation and the Brussels machine is now close to deadlock.
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Opinion Pieces
Activist stances
US public pension funds are slowly recovering from their worst years, 2008-09, when their assets fell to a low of $2.1trn (€1.6trn). In the latest fiscal year ending 30 June 2013, assets increased 8.4%
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FeaturesPolish reform: A lot not to like
Managers of Polish pension funds can at least be grateful their industry has not been entirely nationalised
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Opinion PiecesThe assets of healthcare
A trend that has already taken place in pensions is now happening in the healthcare sector in the US
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Features
Webb’s policy challenges
The achievement may seem modest, but September 2013 marks 40 months since Steve Webb became pensions minister, a junior post within the UK’s Department for Work and Pensions, but one with far-reaching influence over the design, structure and, by extension, asset allocation of occupational pensions in UK.
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Features
Focus Group: Pressure to find a balance
A majority of the respondents to this month’s Off The Record survey (60%) use LDI techniques to manage their liabilities. Of these, almost half (seven respondents) thought yields from core government bonds and rates on interest-rate swaps could fall even lower than they did in the summer of 2012.
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Features
What’s on the menu?
As CIO of the Wasserdicht Pension Funds in the Netherlands, I have quite a bit to do with our fund’s boards and committees. I am on the management board of what we now call the ‘investment bureau’ and in that role I have to sit in on many trustee board meetings as an observer and answer questions.
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Features
Between a rock and a hard place
Investors are unsure whether the current market rally can outlive central bank action, argue Nicholas Lyster and Amin Rajan
