Latest from IPE Magazine – Page 754
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Features
New law for private schemes
The problems of an ageing population are not confined to large countries, as Malta’s experience shows. Despite a buoyant economy and a well-established social security system, the government is preparing legislation to ease the introduction of private pension schemes, including provision for international retirement plans. The latest available figures show ...
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Features
What every multinational needs to know
Multinational companies, whatever their size, need two essential things for successful employee benefits and pension provision: information on the benefit programmes offered in each of their local subsidiaries; and centralised financial control of each of the programmes. Global human resources managers must be open to local alternative concepts and understand ...
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Features
Setting standards to deal with risk
We are all, at last, coming to realise in these volatile times that risk cannot be avoided. Indeed, for any serious investor in the equity market, the acceptance of risk has always been essential to the earning of a reward. Ignoring risk is never an option – the question is ...
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Features
Attitudes are changing
Pension funds are beginning to use derivatives more and more, particularly for asset allocation purposes, hedging their positions and portfolio transitions. Though the use of derivatives is now more common in the UK and the Netherlands, their use across Europe appears to be gaining acceptance. Trevor Robinson of Trevor Robinson ...
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Features
Have a robust policy
If derivatives are used directly by a pension fund carrying out its own management, the fund should have clear policy guidelines on their use. Similarly, to obtain permission to deal in derivatives for a client, an investment manager should clearly define their policy. This would need to cover such criteria ...
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Features
A useful tool, but handle with care
Pension fund trustees increasingly agree that derivatives, used correctly and with adequate controls, can provide benefits to their funds by lowering costs and allowing for the efficient implementation of investment strategies. At times, they can also boost performance and lower risk. Paul Myners, chairman of Gartmore Investment Management, suggests that ...
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Features
No need to shy away
European pension funds are not the most prolific users of derivatives. However, for some, options, futures and swaps form an integral part of the asset management process. This article provides a broad overview of the use of derivative instruments in several European markets and, more importantly, how these instruments can ...
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Features
Structures to tame hedge funds
Pension professionals are expending considerable amounts of energy on alternative investments, and particularly that category labelled ‘hedge funds’, at a time when the traditional asset mixes of equity, bonds and property are failing to deliver the required level of return and are becoming increasingly correlated. However, even if hedge funds ...
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Features
Not yet ready to go naked
On the face of it, there are few businesses that should be more enthusiastic about derivatives than the asset management industry. Corporate use of derivatives, typically to protect earnings, remains controversial: do shareholders really want to be ‘protected’ from volatile earnings drivers, or is the promise of higher risks and ...
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Features
Never mind the quality, feel the width
In times gone by, in a market that has long since evolved, there was just one way to tell whether an institution was getting value for money from its forex provider. Luckily for the investor, it was a very simple measure of value, easily observed. This universal metric was, of ...
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Features
An asset class in their own right?
Given the use of derivatives it is an interesting question to consider whether derivatives should be considered as an asset class in their own right. Derivatives are all about managing risk. They give a financial exposure to the underlying asset or assets on which they are based. There is also ...
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Features
Opening up trading accounts
To help professional investors, such as pension funds, hedge funds and insurers,who want to trade in options and futures, the former Amsterdam Exchanges (now Euronext Amsterdam) introduced professional clearing accounts (PCAs) a few years ago . This is an exclusive clearing facility for professional investors. These accounts allow professional investors ...
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Features
Obtaining fair value for money
All investment transactions are the result of the interplay between the investment fundamentals of risk, return and cost. Transacting derivative deals enables the risk and return characteristics of portfolios to be altered and costs to be controlled or reduced. The fact that, by definition, the value of a derivative is ...
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Features
Innovative products enliven the market
The major trend in European derivatives has been the degree of innovation in terms of the listed derivatives markets. This ranges from the initiatives into single stock futures as developed by the London International Financial Futures & Options Exchange (Liffe), which include both domestic and a range of European and ...
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Features
Merger the best way
Attempts to create a pan-European stock exchage stole the limelight last year and overshadowed the equally important consolidation of clearing and settlement in Europe. With Clearstream, Euroclear and Crest expressing interest in a cross-border system and the LSE, London Clearing House and Crest forming a central counterparty, it appears the ...
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Features
Revolving around custody axis
An integrated approach “to transaction processing, financial logistics, risk management and asset financing supported by state-of-the-art information technology,” -Fortis Bank’s very own description of its ‘information banking’ concept. Admittedly the group has provided each constituent service for years yet according to Marcel Jongmans, head of custody at Fortis, there are ...
