Latest analysis – Page 59
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Features
A different world
Now we have reached the ripe old age of 15, IPE has achieved a fairly good perspective on things. Back in February 1997 when we published our first issue, e-mail was a novelty and hand-held computing devices were a twinkle in someone’s eye.
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Opinion Pieces
Long-term Matters: Learning from bailouts
Why do bankers still not get their part in, to use Ken Rogoff’s phrase, the ‘Great Recession’? And what have institutional investors learned from these bailouts? An interesting CFA Institute blog shows that bailouts today are more frequent and more destructive than ever before. Unsurprisingly, the ‘why’ is deeply contested. Here’s my diagnosis to balance orthodoxy.
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Features
Lost in accounting
It looks like 2012 is going to be busy for the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) as significant projects towards completion, some affecting pensions accounting. In the first quarter of the year the feedback statement on the agenda consultation process will be published. If you are expecting this to be a simple binary choice some time before Easter that adds up to ‘Yes, we will do pension plan measurement issues,’ or ‘No, we won’t,’ then think again. The board will only take that decision after it has held a series of roundtable meetings and tied in the agenda process with the conclusions reached in the entirely separate strategic review.
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Opinion Pieces
EIOPA's draft response to the EC on Solvency II
The consultation issued by EIOPA, on its draft response to the EC’s questions about how Solvency II can be amended to apply to pension schemes, closed on 2 January 2012. EIOPA had been asked for advice on how to meet the EC’s objectives of simplifying setting up cross border schemes, modernising the prudential regulation of defined contribution schemes and enabling IORPs to take advantage of risk mitigation techniques. A key procedural objective for the EC is for a consistent regulatory structure to apply across the financial services sector, and it believes this can be achieved by adapting the principles underlying Solvency II for pension schemes.
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Opinion Pieces
Don’t touch Article 18
Investment rules for workplace pension funds should not be harmonised at European level. At least, this is the view aired in several responses to the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority’s (EIOPA) call for advice (CfA) document on the revisions to the 2003 IORP Directive.
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Opinion Pieces
In the line of fire
The $225bn (€177bn) California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS) used to be considered a leader in setting new trends, such as investing to improve companies’ corporate governance or to achieve environmental and social goals. But today it is in the line of fire, with critics pointing to its disappointing results and pushing for big changes.
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Features
Where East meets West
The Iron Curtain came down more than two decades ago. With the eastern expansion of the European Union that followed, especially in this time of rapid globalisation, one might have thought that all things would be equal by now. But they are far from it.
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Features
Another fine mess
Ollie: “Buying that bridge was no mistake. That’s going to be worth a lot of money to us someday.” – Way Out West (1937).
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Features
From our perspective: Part of the solution
One of the more depressing side effects of the financial crisis has been the spectacle of government attacks on funded pensions. But the practice is not new. Back in autumn 2003, the Belgian government nationalised €3.6bn in first pillar pension assets held by the former state telecoms monopoly Belgacom. As finance minister, Gordon Brown launched a bold attack on UK pensions in 1997 when he announced the abolition of dividend tax relief for pension funds.
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Features
Alternative to euro-zone survival far worse
The euro-zone will survive, if only because the alternative to the current market turbulence would be worse, said former Swedish prime minister Göran Persson.
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Features
Funds must apply holistic approach to equity risk
Pension funds assessing their ability to take on equity risk would do well to adopt a “holistic” approach that considers not only the more “technical” aspects of risk associated with financial products, but also the ability of schemes’ sponsors to cover that risk.
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Features
‘Democracy will be threatened if you lose grip on public finances’
Former Swedish prime minister Göran Persson recalled the night in 1997 when the EU’s Stability and Growth pact was negotiated. His cabinet had already made the decision that Sweden would not join. “We had decided we were not mature enough to join this club, so we would wait. But even then, we were in much better shape than many of those who took it as a given that they should join the euro-zone.”
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Features
Infrastructure for all – but not with state aid
The UK chancellor, George Osborne, last year announced plans to attract £20bn (€23bn) of pension fund assets into infrastructure projects, backed by the National Association of Pension Funds (NAPF) and the Pension Protection Fund (PPF).
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Features
Solvency II again raises hackles in Frankfurt
The sixth European Federation for Retirement Provision (EFRP) conference as well as the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority (EIOPA) conference were held in Frankfurt at the end of November and were a one-off for at least two reasons.
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Features
Long-Term Matters: It’s the water, stupid
I predict that water will become the single most important physical commodity-based asset class, dwarfing oil, copper, agricultural commodities and precious metals.
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Features
Volatility – friend or foe?
Amin Rajan asks what if we are in a prolonged era of fatter tails and frequent bubbles?
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Features
Diary of an Investor: Sinterklaas
Before Christmas, we at Wasserdicht Pension Funds took a call from a research company. They were visiting Dutch pension funds, they said, to carry out a study of attitudes among institutional investors.
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Features
Fear of euro-zone break-up takes hold
Almost half of respondents to this month’s Off The Record survey felt that the biggest credible threat to the global economy or financial markets in 2012 was the euro-zone break-up beginning to look inevitable. “The risk of a break-up has consequences impossible to oversee and hedge. It is not unlikely anymore,” said a Dutch fund.
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Opinion Pieces
Hedge funds face clip
Hedge funds enjoyed record inflows in 2011 as new assets from US pension funds poured into their coffers. But it was also a horrible year for their performance and investors put a lot of pressure on them for better terms.
