Latest from IPE Magazine – Page 291
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Special Report
Europe’s Pension Consultants: Talking heads
IPE put some questions to pension consultants and fiduciary managers, here is a selection of their views
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Special Report
Europe’s Pension Consultants: Shifting plates
Liam Kennedy questions Chris Ford about ideas, advice and implementation in a changing consulting industry
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Features
Rising sun or false dawn?
Daniel Ben-Ami looks back on a year of ‘Abenomics’, and finds optimism in the early hours of a new day for Japan’s economy and markets
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Features
A sovereign story: the Argentine experience
Rani Mina and Mark Stefanini argue that precedents set by the Argentine default experience could well be applied to future sovereign defaults including in the euro-zone
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Features
Quarter century of a rising tide
Nina Röhrbein charts the main events, issues and trends of the past 25 years that have influenced the shape of environmental, social and governance investing
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Special Report
Smart beta: Smart investing or smart trading?
There are limited ways to explain the excess returns that smart beta generates over the market portfolio. Martin Steward uncovers a world of contention over which are the most important
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Features
Be honest about the cost
Flood protection is generally reckoned to be a sound investment, given the relatively small outlay compared with the high cost to life and property when water inundates homes, shops and factories. When the British Isles were pounded by the severest storms in living memory in February, attention naturally focused on whether budget constraints had jeopardised flood protection, and whether greater expenditure would be needed to secure communities and prevent future floods.
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Features
Why 7 February didn’t cow the bulls
When ex-Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke mentioned the possibility of ‘tapering’ the bank’s quantitative easing programme back in May 2013, the first market response was somewhat confused.
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Features
Dutch design
The long and winding road of Dutch pension reforms has reached an interesting juncture: will the country stay true to its collective DB past, or turn into DC country?
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Opinion Pieces
The twain shall meet
The figures speak for themselves when it comes to the development of defined contribution (DC) pension assets. Defined benefit (DB) pensions accounted for over 60% of the total assets in Towers Watson’s annual Global Pension Asset Study 10 years ago but that share is now 53% and falling; the annual growth of DC assets was 8.8% over the past 10 years compared with 5% for DB assets.
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Features
Asset allocation was key in 2013
Economic commentators in 2013 often swayed in the wind over the course of the year. Equity markets went from bull to bear, and back to bull again, as emerging markets felt the stinging chaos of capital flows, in both directions.
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Features
Little nests, birds and all that stuff
Keith Ambachtsheer’s ideal pension plan would not concern itself with labels such as defined benefit (DB) or defined contribution (DC) – rather, it would look at outcome and work its way back to a solution enabling such an outcome.
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Features
A look over the horizon
In the second of a two-part round-up, Stephen Bouvier invites leading pensions accounting practitioners to identify the issues to watch in the year ahead
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Opinion Pieces
Lessons from Davos
Who would have thought that Davos would take over from the dormant Occupy movement on the issue on ‘inequality’? Or that five years after the crisis the financial sector would still be top of the WEF Global Risks register?
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Opinion Pieces
Debbie Harrison Visiting professor The Pensions Institute, Cass Business School, UK
“The most important factor that determines the outcome in DC pensions is the member charge, not the investment strategy”
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Features
Focus Group: Cautious optimism
Of the 34 investors polled for this month’s Focus Group, 56% are confident that the world economy and financial system is over the worst. As a proportion of the poll, this is up on last year, when the split was almost 50/50. The surprise, perhaps, is that the swing has not been stronger, given the stellar performance in 2013 of developed-market equities.
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Features
DB, DC and all that
Wasserdicht’s Dutch pension fund is one of the few that has maintained a strong solvency ratio throughout the crisis of the past few years.
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Features
Investment therapy
René van Pommeren and Ada Wouters-Brongers of the Dutch physiotherapists’ pension fund tell Nina Röhrbein why their fund is unusual in the Netherlands
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Country Report
The Netherlands: All eyes on the homeland
Pension funds are under pressure to raise their domestic investments from the current level of 14%. Lynn Strongin Dodds looks at how they have dealt with this imperative
