Latest from IPE Magazine – Page 319
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Country Report
Germany: Forced into strategic moves
Occupational pension funds are adapting their investment strategies to continuing low-interest rates and the impending IORP Directive. Nina Röhrbein reports
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Country Report
Germany: A study of dream versus reality
Spezialfonds investors would ideally like greater exposure to higher-returning real estate, alternatives and equity, according to Hans-Jürgen Dannheisig and Clemens Schuerhoff
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Country Report
Germany: We have a few questions
As far as the IORP II quantitative impact study is concerned, the German occupational pension sector does not know what it is good for. Barbara Ottawa reports
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Special Report
Insurance-Linked Investments: Herding cats... and other insurance-linked risks
It is not always easy to tell what someone means when they talk about ‘insurance-linked investments’ – but distinctions are imperative because the various components of this complex market present very different risk and return profiles.
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Special Report
Insurance-Linked Investments:Integrating catastrophe risk
Reinsurance risk is clearly diversifying against pension funds’ core financial market risks. But Martin Steward writes on the importance of defining objectives beyond simple diversification when investing in this asset class
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Special Report
Insurance-Linked Investments: AQR Re: where quakes meet quants
Martin Steward met the reinsurance team established by quantitative asset manager AQR Capital Management
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Special Report
Insurance-Linked Investments: Consider your options
Options strategies offer premiums for insuring against financial market risks. Joseph Mariathasan looks at strategies that attempt to collect these while protecting against the worst of the tail risks
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Features
A day to explain Dutch ambitions
This year we held the annual global strategy meeting of the Wasserdicht Pension Funds in the Netherlands. As this year’s organiser, I suggested a pleasant country house hotel near Hilversum.
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Opinion Pieces
Step-change for DC
“Our retirement philosophy is changing the industry”. So says Glenn Dial, head of retirement for Allianz Global Investors (AGI). Dial has been in charge of this business in the US since February 2011, focusing on a target-date strategy that is reinforced by the findings from AGI’s Centre for Behavioural Finance.
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Special ReportInsurance-Linked Investments: Berkshire’s leverage
Andrea Frazzini, David Kabiller and Lasse H Pedersen unpick Warren Buffett’s business model and find a low-beta quality portfolio leveraged with an insurance float and derivatives
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Features
‘Great rotation’, or liquidity-trap trade?
There’s a puzzle at the heart of this month’s Strategy Review on US equities. All four interviewees run defensive portfolios – one is so bearish, he expects a re-rating to 10 times earnings – but have struggled to keep pace with a rally led by quality defensives.
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Features
Whistling in the dark
Starting this month, the Dutch are implementing wholesale benefit cuts. It’s brutal. The Dutch central bank has calculated that the cuts will affect 2m active employees, 1.1m retirees and 2.5m deferred pension plan participants – well over a third of the total population of 16.7m.
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Features
Scrutiny: it’s here to stay
If you were to organise a people’s initiative against being ripped off, you might be guaranteed some measure of success. The fact that the people allegedly doing the ripping off are highly-paid executives makes the issue all the more piquant.
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Features
Why say no to ownership?
Nina Röhrbein asks Martin Clarke, executive director at the UK’s Pension Protection Fund and UKSIF chairman, about ownership duties and opportunities
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Opinion Pieces
End s-factor blindness
Sustainable capitalism is now in vogue. This is very welcome but advocates would have more credibility and impact if they paid greater attention to the ‘s’ (social) of ESG.
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Features
Pensions Accounting: A history lesson
In order to understand why the IASB and the IFRS Interpretations Committee will struggle to identify a principle behind the IAS19 discount-rate objective, let us delve into the history of how the board’s predecessor, the International Accounting Standards Committee, arrived at the AA-corporate bond rate ‘rule’.
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Opinion Pieces
Felix Goltz, Head of applied research, EDHEC-Risk Institute
EDHEC-Risk Institute conducted a study on corporate bond indices in 2011 to analyse construction methodologies, risk and return properties, and the stability of their risk exposures. Subsequently, EDHEC-Risk Institute organised a ‘call for reaction’ in which it asked investment professionals to give their reactions to the research. Here, we report on the results.
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Features
Developments in Dutch pooling
Recent bilateral agreements and regulatory developments are making the Netherlands more attractive as a jurisdiction for asset pooling, according to Wilfried Mulder and Mischa Muntinga
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Features
A tale of two jurisdictions
Expatriate pensions are still an offshore game, and Luxembourg and Liechtenstein are vying for supremacy, writes Gail Moss
