Latest from IPE Magazine – Page 556
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Features
Celebrations on hold
Despite a more than 6% return in the first half, Swiss pension funds have no reason to celebrate due to low bond yields, says the Swiss pension fund association ASIP. Zurich-based ASIP and consulting firm Watson Wyatt reported a 6.2% return for the first six months – driven by strong ...
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Special Report
Model for governance?
IPE asked three pension funds in three countries - in Austria, the Netherlands and Finland - the same question: ‘Is there or should there be a basic European template that could be adopted for pension fund governance or should it be left to national practice?’ Here are their answers: ...
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Features
Lobbying with Chinese chacteristics
The Chinese authorities are pressing ahead with the implementation of a pension reform that is intended to build a sustainable system for all employees, according to Wang Dongjin, vice-minister of labour and social security. The reforms are part of the transformation of communist China’s economy and society that began in ...
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Features
Trying to get some space
During the campaign for February’s general election the then-opposition Socialist Party (PS) promised to cut taxes, raise public sector wages and increase pensions. The governing right-of-centre Social Democrat Party (PSD) was offering fiscal stringency. For a majority of the electorate the choice seemed obvious, and PS leader José Sócrates emerged ...
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Features
Message in a bottle
The spectre of regulation, interference by Europe’s political classes and the perils of industry complacency joined those hardy perennials standards and market practice at the top of the agenda at Sibos – the annual payments and securities processing jamboree organised by messaging co-operative SWIFT, held this year in Copenhagen. Although ...
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Special Report
Price of taking responsibility
Environmental considerations are set to play an increasingly significant role in investment policy following two major new developments earlier this year. The Kyoto Protocol became a legally binding treaty in February. It aims to slow down global warming by demanding cuts in greenhouse gas emissions by an average of 5.2% ...
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Special Report
Digging up the dirt
Today extractive companies - those specialised in extracting natural resources from the ground - are operating in environments that are very different to those in which they operated 10 or more years ago. The oil industry is a good example. As oil reserves in areas such as the North Sea ...
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Features
Managing liability risk
It is a challenging time for pension funds. In a low-return environment, many are tackling funding shortfalls, and are searching for new ways to generate alpha. In the past, schemes used conventional benchmarking to measure performance and risk. The fallibility of such an approach became obvious after the market downturn, ...
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Features
Pooling - waiting for the waters to stir
The Ashmolean Museum in Oxford owns an antique violin called the Messiah. It was made by Stradivarius in 1716 and remained in his family workshop until 1775 when it was sold by his son, Paolo, to an Italian dealer. From there, it passed to a collector, Luigi Tarsio, who used ...
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Features
Building total return portfolios
When choosing an active equity manager, institutional investors typically focus on the manager’s ability to ensure that its products consistently outperform both their equity benchmark and their peers. Investors looking for absolute returns tend to focus on equity long/short strategies to profit from a manager’s stock selection skills. However, many ...
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Features
Three months positive
Despite the poor performance of stock markets (especially the small cap and growth stock segments), hedge funds managed to take advantage of the good performance of bond markets and the rally on the commodity markets to post positive returns for the third month in a row. CTA Global funds achieved ...
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Features
Strong FoF summer recovery continues
Riding the recovery wave that began in May and rose in June, global markets continued to yield very good returns for funds of funds all round. The Eurekahedge Global Fund of Funds Index returned 1.6% in July and tentatively is up 0.8% in August The best performance came from funds ...
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Features
Measured approach
The past few years has seen tremendous institutional investor inflows into commodities. Most investors have chosen to adopt a passive exposure to begin with. It means that choosing a commodity index is one of the most important decisions that an investor can make. It is sometimes easy to forget that ...
