Latest from IPE Magazine – Page 932
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Features
Hong Kong: Strength from within
The Hong Kong market has been affected by sentiment indicators but is fundamentally strong, according to Chung Man Wing, director of HSBC Asset Management Hong Kong, which manages part of the pension investments for HSBC’s em-ployees in Hong Kong and elsewhere.In the very near term, worries about the local property ...
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Austria: Government action depresses equities
The Austrian market has been underperforming in comparison with other continental markets where it normally shows a high correlation due to changes in its company taxation.Yet analysts believe that the market could still provide opportunities for stock selection.Paul Severin, head of re-search Austrian equities at Creditanstalt Investment Bank in Vienna ...
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Features
Austria; Swing to mutuals
The mutual fund industry in Austria began in 1956 with the launch of SELECTA, an international equity fund. That, though, was probably the high point for equity fund investment as far as Austria is concerned.As a nation, Austria has one of the lowest risk tolerances in Europe and, currently, one ...
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Features
Austria: Venturing from home
The BVP pensions fund, based in Vienna currently invests by far the greatest part of its equities investment outside Austria, given the poor performance of the domestic market, relative to its neighbours.The director of the BVP pension fund, Ferdinand Kernbauer, explains that while the fund has asset allocations catering to ...
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Features
BT's defensive strategy
We continue to see an extended cycle of moderate world growth and low inflation. The global economy is out of sync: the US is leading the growth cycle and Japan, Europe and Asia are lagging. We expect the US to slow in response to tightening monetary conditions in 1998 but ...
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Features
Prime's candidates
In the first quarter, we began a gradual reduction of our position in equities and an increase in the share of bonds. We are now underweighted in equities and overweighted in bonds as compared to international benchmarks. The reasons for this follow.We are underweighted in the US. We think the ...
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Features
Robeco plans for robust US recovery
With a robust recovery in the US, signs of a recovery in continental economies and ongoing growth in Japan, one might expect synchronised global growth in the second half of 1997, a shift to more neutral monetary policies worldwide and rising bond yields. Robeco’s Investment Policy Committee (IPC) still believes, ...
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Features
Danish funds outgrow home market
Denmark’s pensions funds are growing so fast that they are keener than ever to look outside their own stock market for investment opportunities. But strict investment regulations keep them largely hemmed inside national borders.In 1995, Danish pension assets were estimated at around Dkr750bn ($115bn). By now, that is thought to ...
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Features
The costs of regulation
Danish pensions funds are overburdened with regulations, and could perform better if they had more freedom to make their own investment decisions, says Peter Dencik, managing director of Singer & Friedlander International Asset Management.Dencik, who used to be deputy executive director of the pension fund administration company PKA in Denmark, ...
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Features
No free lunch from credit spread
In recent months it has become popular to equate monetary union and the introduction of a credit term in government bond yields with a bottom-up” approach to fixed income fund management. This is, at best, rather naive.It is true that the independence of the European Central Bank and the mutual ...
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Features
German firms lag on costs
German companies may be handicapped in labour competitiveness because of pensions costs, according to figures from international consultants.Watson Wyatt Investment Consulting has produced a country-by-country comparison of the average return companies obtain from pension investments (see figure 1), which gives German companies and German-based subsidiaries the most to worry about.Mark ...
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Features
Funds head for their glorious future
Pooled funds are no longer seen as the poor relation, says Fennell Betson
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Features
Europe: Finding common ground
Common trust funds (CTFs) are being used more and more by multinationals operating in Europe who want to bring their pensions assets together in one vehicle. They are offered mainly by US banks and often go by the name of ‘bank common trust funds’. State Street in the US is ...
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Features
Dipping into Europe's pools
The treatment meted out to Europe’s pensions investors wanting to go the pooled fund route varies considerably from country to country. Some provide substantial tax reliefs, while others offer no such in-ducements. European employers operating cross border can take advantage of these for their local subsidiaries, but generally no advantage ...
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Features
Domicile: Home is where the fund is
The choice of fund domicile is becoming an increasingly live issue for both investors and managers. Rachel Oliver checks out four of the leading centres
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Features
Europe: Eyes on pensions market
Though still in the early days of development, the proposed European Pension Fund (EPF) is at the core of detailed discussions and strategic planning in Luxembourg’s banking community, to meet a launch deadline which could be as early as the beginning of next year. And Lucien Thiel, general manager of ...
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Features
Fees: Funds not necessarily the easy option
“Investors who use pooled fund structures as a partial or complete substitute for direct investment in underlying securities can get low-cost access to a wide variety of asset classes from the world’s best money managers.” Right? Right!“Investors who use pooled funds face being charged excessive fees for unsuitable products by ...
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Features
Germany: Hidden attractions of Spezialfunds
The advantages of Spezialfonds for non-German institutional investors are not yet appreciated, argues Hans Karl Kandlbinder
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Features
Selection: Lining up for the beauty parade
Advisers involved in fund selection in the UK, Germany and Switzerland agree that there is no single set of criteria and that any process must start by assessing client needs.Ed Wilson, head of investment re-search at HSBC Gibbs in Manchester, explains the process: The first thing we do is take ...
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Features
USA: Style analysis brings indexing out of the closet
The recent decline of the Dow to early-1996 levels poses a number of potential problems for US investors.The US equity market is probably the most heavily indexed in the world. Estimates put the level of index-tracking at around 10% of market capitalisation. Around $90bn-100bn of this is in mutual fund ...
