Latest from IPE Magazine – Page 340
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Asset Class Reports
Structured Credit & Loans: A structural spread
European loans seem to offer compelling value against the US market. But Joseph Mariathasan uncovers some telling structural disadvantages on this side of the Atlantic
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Asset Class Reports
Structured Credit & Loans: Collateral damage
Tarred with the same brush as the US securities that sparked the 2008 crisis, Europe’s ABS are shunned by investors and regulators alike. Joseph Mariathasan finds that pension funds might be the key to bringing depth to the market again
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Asset Class Reports
Structured Credit & Loans: Senior secure
David Gillmor and Taron Wade find Europe’s senior loan market delivering a strong recovery over its first cycle
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Asset Class Reports
Structured Credit & Loans: It’s a good cop-bad cop thing
Martin Steward speaks with David Creighton of Cordiant Capital on structuring emerging market loans alongside the world’s major development banks
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Country Report
Italy: A new order
First-pillar reforms and proposals to change investment rules for second-pillar funds represent a step change for Italian companies and pension funds. But they have not been matched by a commitment to support supplementary pensions as a whole, finds Nina Röhrbein
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Country Report
Italy: Meeting the governance challenge
Italy’s pension market is experiencing a period of significant change in the wake of government reforms enacted at the end of 2011. Armando Piccinno discusses the ramifications
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Country Report
Italy: Adopting diversity for growth
Gail Moss reports on how Compagnia di San Paolo has managed its assets while faced with the risks of low euro-zone growth and a major shareholding in an Italian bank – Intesa San Paolo
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Country Report
Italy: Missing the point of reform
Maria Teresa Cometto reports on the political criticism of the technocratic-driven pension reforms of December 2011. Attention has focused on the so-called esodati, rather than the calamitous state of the public pension system
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Special ReportGlobal assets flatline at €36.3trn
Asset managers in our listing are ranked by global asset sunder management, and by the country of the main headquarters and/or main European domicile. Assets managed by these groups are in excess of €36.3trn.
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Special ReportTop 120 European institutional managers
This breakdown details total third-party asset managed for all types of European institutional clients - pension funds, insurance companies, corporates, charities and foundations - for the leading 120 managers in this business segment. Total assets are €5.4trn (2010=€5.7trn)
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Features
Alarm call
Persistently low rates are taking their toll on pension funding levels throughout Europe. Now they have forced authorities in three European countries – Denmark, the Netherlands and Sweden – to act to shore up pension funding, to allow providers to meet their guarantees, or to avoid benefit cuts.
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Features
Have bond markets become myopic?
In this month’s commodities report we address two phenomena – the slowdown and transition of China’s economy, and the US shale gas revolution – that could profoundly change our entire macroeconomic framework.
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Features
Long live the deal...
The Dutch pension deal, as such, is off the table. But despite all the political turmoil, a working group representing experts, government, supervisors and various stakeholders has continued to hammer out the details of the new system, resulting in the long-awaited outline presented on 30 May. The pension deal is dead. Long live the pension deal.
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Features
Looking to IORP III?
The European Commission’s decision to postpone to summer 2013 its white paper on the IORP II Directive represents yet another delay in a highly protracted process that has to balance the need for reform of the first IORP Directive, the interests of occupational pensions and the insurance industry, as well as the Commission’s desire, as a lead global initiator of financial services legislation, to test the limits of its competence in harmonising EU laws.
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Features
Brussels pulls a Green Paper out of its hat
The pension industry’s lobbying campaign over the revised IORP Directive seems to be bearing fruit. Not only has Brussels agreed to postpone the publication of a draft version of the Directive until next summer, the Commission is also set to launch a Green Paper on long-term investing.
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Features
The sustainability of longevity
As longevity becomes an increasing problem in developed nations, governments have moved to increase retirement ages, with some either considering or legislating for an automatic link to longevity. Despite its popularity among both national parliaments and the European Union, however, the OECD has warned that any such link could be very difficult to implement.
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Features
Schemes get on track for central clearing
The European Market Infrastructure Regulation (EMIR) – like most new legislation – has its share of critics. It will hit derivatives players, of course, who have lamented the increased costs the new rules will entail. But it could also have a deep impact on pension funds and their governance.
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Features
The managed decline of DB pension funds
The death of defined benefit (DB) funds has, in some form, been prophesied for decades, but the latest threat of closure – stemming from the publication of statutory guidelines on Ireland’s new funding standard – may well prove to be a real and insurmountable threat to final salary schemes in the country.
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Features
Pensions Accounting: Willingly deceived
The world wants to be deceived and deceived it will be. The Roman satirist Petronius’s acerbic critique of human nature is a convenient introduction to an issue in front of the IFRS interpretations committee in May. It all starts with a letter from the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA).
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Opinion Pieces
Chris Sutton, Towers Watson
Pension funds find themselves between a rock and the hard place as they struggle to provide for ageing populations in a tough investment climate. As a result of this, and of an inheritance of under-funding, retirement savings continue to attract media and public policy attention. Will pension funds be overcome by looming threats or seize the opportunity for change?
