Latest from IPE Magazine – Page 745
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Features
Mefop chooses on performance
Make no mistake about it. The Italians are deadly serious about developing their pension funds, adopting the latest and best from outside, but only after a thorough and rigorous analysis as to what they need and how it can serve their needs. This message came through very clearly at the ...
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Features
Transparency the hedge issue
On the back of plunging markets, pension schemes have been rudely re-awakened to negative returns for the first time in many years. As a result, headspinning research papers debating alternative investment, particularly in hedge funds, are firmly back in the ‘in-tray’ of pension fund managers around the continent. So, where ...
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Features
EMAC's surprise boost for directive
There is light at the end of the seemingly perpetual European pensions directive tunnel. The unanimous vote of the European Monetary Affairs Committee (EMAC) on June 19 to adopt the Karas report on the occupational pensions directive, brings the possibility of a supporting vote by the European Parliament a decisive ...
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Features
Sitting out the summer gloom
Plagued by fears of looming recession, investors in Japanese equities are now playing a waiting game. The reforms outlined by new prime minister Junichiro Koizumi have given the market hope that longstanding problems, particularly in the banking sector, could finally be resolved. But weak economic data are keeping the mood ...
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Features
Year of misery rolls on
The first half of the year certainly has certainly been a miserable one for government bond markets. As central banks across the developed world eased – some more aggressively than others – so yield curves began to steepen markedly. For most bond markets this also meant rising yields at the ...
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Features
Irish vote 'just a hiccup'
The purpose of the Nice Treaty, signed by the European member states in February, is to complete the programme of institutional reform designed to prepare the EU for a significant expansion in its membership. It is absolutely key to the EU enlargement process. The European press certainly had a field ...
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Features
Euro assets under cloud
Inflationary pressures, stagnant interest rates and an ever weakening euro are keeping investors out of Europe, leading to a lack of consumer confidence and keeping the markets across Euroland on an ever downward spiral. “Inflation in particular is becoming more of a serious issue,” says Harald Sporleder, a European fund ...
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Features
Modest gains only on cards
The major valuation anomalies of the past few years – equities overpriced relative to bonds, TMT (technology-media-telecommunications) stocks overpriced relative to other stocks, and large-capitalisation stocks overpriced relative to small-capitalisation stocks – have been largely eliminated. Most equity and bond markets are now trading close to fair value, as are ...
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Features
0 dawn or not?
Global financial markets are at a critical juncture. After having partially recovered from the sharp decline in the first quarter of this year, stock markets are showing renewed signs of weakness. Whether the second quarter rebound was a false dawn or only the first leg of a more fundamental and ...
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Features
Masters of reinvention
Both equity markets and balanced managers took a battering during 2000 and the year to date. Disappointed institutional investors are consequently looking elsewhere for that elusive alpha and, as they review mandates, so the managers in turn reinvent themselves. If it’s not balanced managers portraying themselves as specialists in everything, ...
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Features
Driven by 'Best Value'
Since Best Value came into force last year, UK local authorities (LAs) have been required to provide quality of services at the right price in all areas related to administration, functioning and investment strategies by putting into place clear standards of cost and quality, using the most efficient and effective ...
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Features
Multi-manager momentum
The multi-manager or manager of manager concept is beginning to gather momentum in the UK market as institutional investors tentatively hand over their assets. Leading the field are Frank Russell and Northern Trust Global Investors but SEI, the US-based manager of managers, is making inroads into the market, having set ...
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Features
DC to drive fund business forward
One of the largest and more sophisticated fund management markets in the world, the strongly-equity oriented UK market, has been providing its highly developed pension fund industry with a broad a range on investment vehicles for a long time. Whether pension funds opt to invest in segregated accounts or choose ...
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Special Report
SRI: not high on agenda
Rather like the road to hell, the road to outperformance appears to be paved with good intentions. If the experience of socially responsible investment (SRI) in the UK is anything to go by, though, then those intentions appear somewhat half-hearted. SRI in its purest form was the exclusion of offensive ...
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Features
London 'back on front foot'
The London Stock Exchange, often seen to follow rather than lead, took rivals by surprise in May with the announcement of plans for its own listing, alongside the first signs of a real ‘European strategy’. Commenting on the announcement of the intention to list, Don Cruickshank, chairman of the exchange, ...
