Latest analysis – Page 64
-
Features
Liam Kennedy: Risk handicap
“Political risk is the hardest of all to handicap”, a well-respected analyst told me recently. Many investors largely disregard the political risk factor in emerging markets after the likes of Goldman Sachs successfully propagated the BRICs narrative and the old story of ‘risky’ emerging markets and ‘safe’ developed markets was ...
-
Features
From our perspective: What’s your co-operation plan?
As long-term expected portfolio returns settle at modest annual rates of well under 10%, basis points really do count as the pension fund community – and its sponsoring stakeholders – look to deliver pensions at a reasonable cost to all concerned.
-
Features
Hutton warns against ‘pick & mix’
The publication of the final report by the UK’s Independent Public Service Pensions Commission, more commonly referred to as the Hutton Report on pensions, was published in March.
-
Features
NAPF gets to grips with SIPs and BRICS
Lord Hutton’s final report on UK public sector pensions was not the only matter discussed at the National Association of Pension Funds (NAPF) Investment Conference in Edinburgh, although the presence of the former work and pensions secretary was certainly felt.
-
Features
Germany’s fiduciary confusion
The simmering debate over institutional interest in fiduciary management in Germany – or rather the lack of it – has boiled over in recent weeks, with an array of consultants and asset managers weighing in on costs, transparency, conflicts of interest and even the very meaning of the term.
-
Book Review
Books: The wheat and the chaff
"Investment Beliefs: A Positive Approach to Institutional Investing", by Kees Koedijk and Alfred Slager, 2011, 205 pages
-
Book Review
Books: In a ‘death spiral’
‘The Day After the Dollar Crashes: A Survival Guide for the Rise of the New World Order’, by Damon Vickers, Wiley 2011, 190 pages
-
Features
Paved with good intentions
Last year, I attended the pensions Green Paper Conference in Brussels, and afterwards I happened to share a taxi to the airport with UK pensions minister Steve Webb. Apart from the fact our dyspeptic Belgian driver felt the need to fling epithets at every other car on the road while puffing on a cigarette, the journey was memorable for one other reason.
-
Opinion Pieces
Meet Ms Active Ageing
Pension funds will observe with interest the European Commission’s announcement goal of the European Innovation Partnership on Active and Healthy Ageing. This is to add two years to the average EU healthy lifespan by 2020. However, achieving healthy, longer lives is not quite as straightforward as it seems.
-
Opinion Pieces
State debate hots up
The debate about US public employees’ pension benefits is hotting up, and the results will have a great impact on the pension fund industry. For the first time there is a discussion about the real costs of promises made by politicians to public sector employees and the bill to tax payers. In fact, the whole matter is extremely political, as one can see from the very different approaches of two neighbouring states, Wisconsin and Illinois.
-
Features
Liam Kennedy: Advice, please
Few consultants wear their heart on their sleeve when it comes to the outcome of their advice to pension funds in terms of hard numbers.
-
Features
Martin Steward: Homeward bound
It’s exactly two years since I wrote my first column in IPE. In it, I asked whether the OECD could grow enough to support its pensions. “Pension funds will almost certainly have to increase allocations to emerging markets.”
-
Features
Mariska van der Westen: A bumpy ride
It used to be that the pensions industry was considered staid and dependable and – let’s face it – not the most exciting topic of conversation. But no more. After decades of quietly looking after the nation’s pension savings with nary a hitch, Dutch pension fund managers suddenly find themselves ...
-
Features
From Our Perspective: Careful what you wish for
At the end of January, Michel Barnier, the European commissioner for the internal market, told an audience of Dutch pension funds definitively that the Commission will not apply Solvency II rules to pension funds.
-
FeaturesForest funds snapshot
Céline Claudon presents the key findings from IWC’s comprehensive database of institutional timberland investment funds
-
Features
TV strikes again
Zembla, a current affairs TV programme in the Netherlands, lit a firestorm in the pensions industry last month after it argued that Dutch pension funds have underperformed consistently over the past two decades, missing out on more than €145bn in unrealised returns. The programme claimed that funds had generally invested too much in risky assets and that trustees lacked the necessary expertise to look after Dutch workers’ pension savings. It even went so far as to accuse the industry of “bad management”.
-
Features
Rate rise offsets returns
Rising bond yields were the bane of some Dutch pension schemes as the industrypublished its fourth-quarter and year-end results for 2010.
-
Features
Hey you, get onto my cloud
Martin Steward talks to SRL Global about bringing cloud-computing hedge fund portfolio infrastructure to the pensions community
-
Opinion Pieces
Muni transparency
US lawmakers, investors and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) are asking state and local administrations for more transparency about their pension liabilities. All are concerned that these liabilities are increasing the risk level of the $2.9trn (€2.1trn) of municipal bonds issued to balance local public budgets.
-
Opinion Pieces
MEPS rush green paper follow-up
Substantial indications of the direction Brussels is likely to take on pension policy are emerging surprisingly early as a follow-up to the Commission’s policy paper of last July.
