Latest from IPE Magazine – Page 738
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Features
Keeping our powder dry
World financial markets are at a critical juncture awaiting the US political response following the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington. The shock comes at a time when tentative signs that the monetary easing witnessed this year were starting to impact the US economy. The key consideration now is ...
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Features
Slightly overweight US
Pessimism about the outlook for the global economy have continuously increased in the past months and we now believe that the economic cycle will not trough before the first quarter 2002. We also expect the global recovery to be more shallow than previously thought and to start from a deeper ...
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Features
It's an open architecture world
The top domestic financial groups still control the investment fund market in Germany, with 90% of the assets and 80% of fund sales channelled through them. According to data from Lipper, the top 10 German fund managers increased their hold on the market during the second quarter of the year ...
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Features
Ironing out the creases
Austria’s pensions and asset management industry remains relatively undeveloped but changes are afoot that will change the landscape for good. As more companies are coaxed by the government and more appreciate the predicament of their employees, so the number of multi-employer funds and corporate schemes increases. Billions of euros stored ...
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Features
Investment consultants coming into their own
The German market is getting more sophisticated and investment consultants are playing an increasingly important role. Although the size of the consultancy industry is still very small compared to that of other European countries, their presence has become crucial at a time when new developments in legislation and changes in ...
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Features
Spezialfonds' growth rate eases
Is the rate of expansion of the German institutional investment market on the wane? The vehicle most used by local institutional investors is the Spezialfond and according to this year’s Kandlbinder report which is issued as separate supplement with this issue of IPE, the rate of growth of these vehicles ...
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Features
S&P's geometrical index progression for commodities
In a move which extends its businesses beyond equities, Standard & Poor’s has come up with a new commodities index. There is no shortage of heavyweight commodities benchmarks in the marketplace, with Goldman Sachs Commodity Index and the Dow Jones-AIG Commodity Index already in broad use. But S&P sees some ...
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Features
Doctors' healthy fund
Like most Danish pension funds, the Copenhagen-based Laegernes Pensionskasse (LPK) is a defined contribution (DC) arrangement, but operates under the guaranteed return basis. This requirement is raising real concerns in parts of the pensions and insurance sectors, since they both work under the insurance law. “We have different rates of ...
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Features
Getting to acceptable risk levels
A number of pension funds may well face a big test at their next actuarial valuation. With a combination of falling stock markets, low bond yields and increasing life expectancy pension fund solvency levels are coming under severe pressure. No wonder that in the UK the government has just announced ...
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Features
Why core plus strategies win
Over the past 20 years, as real estate has come to be an accepted part of a diversified institutional investment portfolio, strategies for investment in real estate have expanded across the entire risk/return spectrum. Investment options now range from low risk/low volatility strategies, some of which offer almost bond-type characteristics, ...
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Features
Role of funds checked by survey
A recent survey into institutional investment in property1 has found that the available benchmarks reflect the true market situation, despite a lack of clarity both in the questionnaires used to obtain data and the categories used to report the findings. The study, by DTZ Research on behalf of Royal & ...
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Features
It's not all one-way traffic
Key to the issue of outsourcing is whether to manage assets in-house or to appoint a third party investment manager. According to George Urquhart of the WM Company, internal managers are finding themselves under pressure from tight human resource budgets while trustees and plan sponsors are under pressure from consultants ...
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Features
Putting the case for staying in-house
The issue of whether or not a pension scheme should be administered in-house or outsourced could be boiled down to two words – effectiveness and efficiency! Can my scheme be more effectively and efficiently managed in-house than having the work outsourced. Before attempting to answer that question, we have to ...
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Features
Wake-up call to suppliers
Reluctance to outsource pension scheme administration has continued for the eighth year running, according to the Capita Hartshead Annual Pension Scheme Administration Survey. This is despite an overall trend in industry in favour of outsourcing non-core functions, and despite clear cost advantages. The survey results were based on a questionnaire ...
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Features
Europe's steady evolution
Three broad developments in European pensions are creating new business opportunities for third party fund administrators. The first is the move towards defined contribution (DC) schemes in countries like Italy and Germany. Germany’s first DC products, Pensionsfonds promoted by social security minister Walter Reister, are expected to produce a flow ...
