Latest from IPE Magazine – Page 309
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Asset Class Reports
Structured Credit: Signs of life return to CLOs
Jennifer Bollen finds a re-birth in Europe’s CLO market, offering better pricing and lower risk – but facing significant obstacles to achieving maturity
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Features
Rating hybrids
Issuance of hybrid capital in Europe surged at the start of the year and is likely to remain elevated in the near term. Taron Wade discusses how such instruments are rated and why new issuers are getting involved
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FeaturesA high-yield lesson from history
Richard Ryan warns investors not to respond to apparently tight spreads in investment-grade bonds by simply stretching for the extra 260 basis points available from high yield
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Features
Smarter outsourcing
The term ‘outsourcing’ first came to light in 1979, and gained popularity in business by the 1990s as companies sought supply-chain efficiency and to concentrate on their core activity. The notion also gained currency in pension fund management.
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Features
Taking the sugar out of the alphabet soup
Jeroen Dijsselbloem has been taking sweeties away from the finance industry again. The Dutch finance minister and Eurogroup president has told pension funds not to expect the same inflation premium on future PPP projects that they enjoyed on the N33 motorway deal.
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Features
The public sin
Last spring, Christian Aid argued that the entry of pension funds into the soft-commodities derivatives market had contributed to recent hikes in food prices.
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Features
End to the first act
Six years since the idea was first raised, the European Commission has finally drawn a curtain on its proposal to apply rigid risk-based solvency requirements – pillar one of Solvency II – on occupational pension funds in IORP II. At least for now, since Michel Barnier, the commissioner for the single market, has made it clear that this is a postponement, not a policy abandonment.
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Features
My way, not the highway
Jeroen Dijsselbloem was never going to have an easy time as the Dutch minister of finance, thanks to the country’s slowing economic growth and the need for cuts to bring deficit spending under the European Union’s 3% threshold.
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Features
Directing the directive
Cécile Sourbès asks Matti Leppälä, secretary-general and chief executive of PensionsEurope, to discuss the next steps for the revised IORP Directive
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Features
Attention moves to portability
Eight years have passed since the European Commission introduced its first proposals on a Pension Portability Directive, and yet, so far, there has been no sign of this coming to fruition. Back in 2005, it introduced a proposal for a directive aiming to improve the portability of supplementary pension rights.
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Opinion Pieces
Whose risk counts?
Paul Woolley – a successful academic economist, regulator and fund manager – gave sustainability investors a direct challenge at the recent Responsible Investor conference.
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Features
Accounting: But what does it mean?
The April meeting of the International Accounting Standards Board set the scene for yet another rushed consideration of draft chapters for inclusion in the conceptual framework discussion paper. The document is to be published in July.
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Opinion Pieces
OTPP looks east
The CAD129.5bn (€96.4bn) Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan (OTPP) believes it is one of the best managed pension funds in the world. To remain that way, it is looking east for growth and is adjusting to the new demographic trends, but not abandoning its defined benefit (DB) model.
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Opinion Pieces
Alexander Ineichen, Founder of Ineichen Research and Management
“Confusing uncertainty with volatility or VaR is like mistaking a tiger for a pussycat. It’s irresponsible and dangerous”
