Latest analysis – Page 60
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Features
QE2: Good for the economy, bad for pensions?
While many in the flnancial market welcomed the Bank of England’s relaunch of quantitative easing – or QE2 – committing a further £75bn (€86bn)to its asset repurchase facility, the timing of the announcement took everyone by surprise – including those in the pension industry, who immediately called for an “urgent” meeting with the regulator.
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Features
Search for advantage in a crowded market
Why launch an emerging market debt (EMD) strategy when there are already 40-plus institutional competitors in the market? First State Investments – which has just hired Helene Williamson from F&C Asset Management along with Jan-Markus May, Manuel Cañas and Philip Fielding to run the strategy – did not make the decision for short-term reasons, according to Gary Withers, the firm’s EMEA managing director.
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Features
Take a leaf out of Apple’s book
In the third in a new series of articles, Neeraj Sahai and Amin Rajan argue that robust innovations require robust processes and robust drivers
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Features
Diary of an Investor: Plain talking
This week I read about a new initiative calling itself the 300 Club.
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Opinion Pieces
Building sector pensions
The European Association of Paritarian Institution’s (AEIP) is working on a continent and sector-wide pension system for the building industry. Francesco Briganti, director of AEIP’s Brussels office, says it aims to create a sector-wide social scheme that could eventually pool pension contributions. Overall benefits would be the spread of best practice in this vast industrial sector.
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Opinion Pieces
Saving, the Texas way
Galveston County, Texas, is no longer famous solely for the hurricane that devastated the area killing an estimated 8,000 people in September 1908, the deadliest natural disaster ever to strike the US. Now the county is cited as an alternative ‘Texas’ model for fixing Social Security.
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Features
Mariska van der Westen: Just who can you trust?
In the Netherlands, as elsewhere, the trustee model has come under intense scrutiny after the credit crisis. Dutch pension funds lost €120bn in 2008, €20bn of which can be chalked up to poor execution, the so-called ‘implementation shortfall’. Studies have found that trustee boards often lack the knowledge and expertise ...
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Features
Swiss funds welcome minimum exchange rate
The recent falls in equity and bond markets – added to the losses from foreign exchange risks – have caused Swiss pension funds to shiver in recent months. But the decision taken by the Swiss National Bank (SNB) on 6 September to set a minimum exchange rate of CHF1.20 to ...
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Features
ATP judges NOW is the time to enter the UK
ATP’s confirmation that it will be moving into the UK pension market was not, in itself, surprising. As anticipated, Morten Nilsson – now both head of ATP’s international operations and the chief executive-elect for its UK entity NOW Pensions – announced that the defined contribution (DC) scheme’s assets would be ...
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Features
Liam Kennedy: Two paths, not irreconcilable
Two books landed on my desk in September – one on the subject of good pension governance, the other on retirement income.
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Features
Martin Steward: Trigger unhappy
When does a tactical loosening of a strategy become a panic? And when does panic start to undermine the strategy itself? If your strategy is liability-driven investing (LDI), you might well ask. It wasn’t long ago that plummeting yields were trumpeted as the vindication of LDI. At the end of 2009, celebrating the sixth anniversary of the pioneering Friends Provident Pension Scheme/Merrill Lynch transaction, Redington observed that UK 30-year real yields had fallen 126bps in that time. Around the same time Lane Clark and Peacock compared the 10% loss on the average FTSE100 pension scheme’s assets with the 3% gain on Friends Provident’s during 2008.
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Features
From our perspective: A very bumpy ride
Bumpy flights have predictable and unpredictable outcomes: you know the ride will be more uncomfortable and some of the passengers may be sick. You just don’t know precisely when you’re going to hit the turbulence, or whether you or the person next to you is going to be the one who needs the sick bag. You might end up landing at a different airport altogether if the flight is diverted.
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Features
The attractions of age as an asset class
Delegates at September’s Longevity Seven conference in Frankfurt discussed the practicalities of a liquid longevity market and who might invest in it, should old age become an asset class.
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Features
Responding to the wake-up call
In the third article in the current series, Nick Lyster and Amin Rajan argue that only a gold standard in client engagement will deliver decent innovation outcomes
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Features
No Greek tragedy
Well, things didn’t get much better in the markets after our long family drive back from the Italian Riviera to The Hague in August – volatility continued on the markets and it became clear that when it comes to the euro, plan ‘A’ isn’t up to much and plan ‘B’ doesn’t exist.
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Opinion Pieces
Consensus elusive
The US retirement system might change dramatically by year’s end; or pension reform could be postponed again until after the 2012 presidential election. Either way, the debate about how to prevent the bankruptcy of social security is hotter than ever.
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Opinion Pieces
Thoughtful ownership
Investment managers too often have very little understanding of the businesses in which they are investing, delegates were told at a meeting in Brussels during the launch of a new study on stewardship.
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Features
Liam Kennedy: Break some policy eggs
After years of poorly conceived occupational pensions policy, the UK is finally attempting to remedy the situation – at least in the defined contribution area.
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Features
Martin Steward: Mayhem on Wall Street – and Main Street
As the kids ran riot across England on 8 August, traders nursed a one-month stock market loss of 15%. I don’t suppose the rioters were thrown into panic by their Bloomberg screens, but this was a striking coincidence for long-term investors to ponder.
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Features
Jim Robinson: I’m waiting for the alien invasion
Two snippets of news recently caught my eye for peculiar reasons. I say ‘peculiar’ because this summer has brought many eyebrow-raising news stories, including the collapse of the Greek economy, the sovereign debt crisis, the News of the World hacking scandal, the US credit downgrade, the panic in equity markets ...
