Latest from IPE Magazine – Page 15
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Special Report
Denmark: Early retirement rules face further overaul
Arne, a new regime to allow workers in strenuous jobs to retire early may be merged with a more popular scheme
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Special Report
Finland: Stabilising the level of pension insurance contributions
Government programme sets out to find ways to stabilise the level of pension insurance contributions over the long term
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Special Report
France: Macron’s major pension reforms take effect
September sees the enactment of controversial retirement reforms passed by presidential decree earlier this year, bringing 42 occupational regimes together
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Opinion Pieces
Europe escaped the Great Retirement Boom but watch out for the crunch
Continental Europe appears to have largely escaped the trend known in the US as the ‘Great Retirement Boom’, where an economically comfortable cohort of 50 to 64-year-olds has retreated from work in the post-COVID period.
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Opinion Pieces
Cambridge and Westminster: a tale of two pension schemes
The Houses of Parliament and Cambridge University are two venerable British institutions. But the differences in how they run their pension arrangements illustrate the contrast between the UK-style pooled liability-driven investment (LDI) and a more traditional form of pension investing, no longer as popular in the UK but still common elsewhere.
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Opinion Pieces
Resistance to Germany’s new buffer fund proposal
Last year, the manager of Germany’s pay-as-you-go first-pillar scheme, Deutsche Rentenversicherung, recorded income of €363bn, the largest share coming from contributions (€275.6bn), and €87.4bn in public subsidies.
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Opinion Pieces
Private assets still a priority for pension fund investors
Investor sentiment towards private markets continues to be positive, despite the continuing challenges of higher interest rates and ongoing macroeconomic uncertainty.
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Opinion Pieces
ESG remains mired in politics in the US
“I am not going to use the word ESG because it’s been misused by the far left and the far right,” said BlackRock CEO Larry Fink in a conversation at the Aspen Ideas Festival in June.
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Opinion Pieces
Concerns over plans for Australian super funds to provide advice
In what some see as a controversial move, Australia’s Labor government under prime minister Anthony Albanese has reformed the nation’s financial advice industry, opening the door for industry superannuation funds to offer financial advice to millions of members.
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Features
Fossil fuel divestment is back in fashion
More and more asset owners are exiting oil and gas. Sophie Robinson-Tillett speaks to some about why, and how, they’re selling out of the sector
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Features
Research: The yin and yang of passive and active investing
Amin Rajan and Sebastian Schiele look at the complementary relationship between active and passive investment strategies
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Opinion Pieces
How to improve investment committees
Most asset management firms, private and public institutional investors and family offices have investment committees. Poorly designed boards can potentially destroy substantial value in the investment management industry, yet little research is available. I would like to propose a new way to think about the governance of investment committees.
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Interviews
Pension funds on the record: The investors developing their own index methodologies
FRR and PUBLICA are among the growing number of European pension funds developing proprietary benchmarks to achieve their sustainability objectives
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Features
Britain’s LDI crisis: When things nearly fell apart
On 23 September 2022, Kwasi Kwarteng, the then UK chancellor of the exchequer, announced a £45bn (€52bn) package of tax cuts. The hand-outs, designed to please key voters, were the wrong gift at the wrong time. For several years, the Bank of England had been attempting to end quantitative easing and start putting a higher price on borrowing.
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Features
How the AT1 bond market shrugged off the Credit Suisse debacle
On a late Monday evening in August, the Italian right-wing government unexpectedly announced a new 40% tax on banks’ ‘windfall’ profits derived by the higher lending rates. Shares in Italian banks tumbled, banking executives cried foul, and analysts poured scorn over the measure. The government, which was hoping to raise up to €3bn to help families and small businesses, backtracked shortly after, scaling back the tax.
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Interviews
Paul Lorentz, Manulife Asset & Wealth Management: Canada to Europe, via Asia
Values are changing rapidly in the world of asset management. Leaders come and go, but perhaps less so than in the past, and loyalty to a company is increasingly appreciated by clients, as a sign of commitment and stability.
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Asset Class Reports
Rethinking net-zero equities benchmarks
The EU developed rules for climate benchmarks in 2019. After a surge in uptake, investor sentiment is already cooling
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Features
The US dollar’s declining status as a global reserve currency
The recent US debt ceiling negotiations have brought into question the viability of the US dollar’s status as a global reserve currency. Long-term investors have been reviewing their strategic asset allocation away from the currency, seeking to diversify their exposure and to take advantage of long-term investment opportunities.
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Special Report
Germany: Fighting for innovation
The three-party coalition faces important decisions in coming months to reconcile differences over its planned reforms to all three pillars of the pension system
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Interviews
USS: British universities adopt modern pension investment governance
Mirko Cardinale, head of investment strategy and advice at USS Investment Management, speaks to Carlo Svaluto Moreolo about the recent changes in the scheme’s governance framework