Latest from IPE Magazine – Page 347
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Features
Efficiency drive
A television documentary series in the UK is currently transporting British viewers back to the 1970s, an era remembered for the oil crisis but also for government energy efficiency campaigns.
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Features
From our Perspective: Voting with their feet
Two factors have prompted the French pension fund UMR Corem and the insurer AG2R La Mondiale to seek a jurisdiction outside France for pension activities. One is the onset of Solvency II and the other, closely related, is the lack of an IORP-compliant regime in France for the provision of second-pillar pensions that would help them avoid the structures of Solvency II.
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Features
Initial margin proposal for OTC derivatives
Just as Brussels had seemingly smoothed over its relations with the pension industry by granting a temporary exemption from the EMIR Directive, a new consultation paper has stirred things up. In a joint paper, the European Securities and Markets Authority, the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority and the European Banking Authority (EBA), announced that they are considering a requirement to “exchange, post or collect” initial margins for bilateral over-the-counter (OTC) derivative trades.
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Features
Not all sovereign debt is created equal
Pension funds are the cure for all ills facing the world – or so politicians would have us believe. This is true in many countries – the UK government is pushing schemes to take on infrastructure projects it cannot or will not pay for.
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Opinion Pieces
Long-term Matters: RI talk wastes time
The time and money spent on long-term, responsible investing has not been very productive. Don’t get me wrong – we’ve made important progress and our common-sense approach to change was the right (only?) place to start. But if we can learn from experience, we could be making much deeper, faster progress.
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Features
Garbage in, garbage out
If you work in accountancy you will have been far too busy since 2009 with the chaos created by David Tweedie out of the International Accounting Standards Board’s workplan to worry too much about administrative matters over at the board’s Cannon Street headquarters. That means there is a real danger that you could have missed an item on the board’s agenda for 21 March 2012 about operating procedures at the board’s International Financial Reporting Standards Interpretations Committee.
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Opinion Pieces
Jeroen Wilbrink & Jelle Beenen
In the Guest Viewpoint column of IPE March 2012, Kees Cools and Anton van Nunen claimed that the current calculation used in assessing the health of a pension scheme is incorrect. They also claimed it had forced pension schemes to sell ‘cheap’ equities in favour of ‘expensive’ sovereign bonds, and that this selling has depressed prices of equities.
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Features
Keeping tabs on the costs
Pension funds and trustees need to know exactly what different DC pension providers are charging so they can compare them against each other. Gail Moss reports
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Features
Sentiment undimmed
Frank Schnattinger outlines the key findings of IPE Institutional Investment’s 2012 survey following trends in the German-speaking institutional market
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Country Report
France: Life after downgrade
Gail Moss tests the institutional investment waters after January’s S&P downgrade and ahead of Solvency II
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Country Report
Nordic Region: Lonely hearts club
The government has announced plans to channel pension fund assets into debt financing for SMEs. Rachel Fixsen outlines the various initiatives
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Country Report
Nordic Region: Hard to beat
IPE looks at the sucess of AP7’s 2010 decision to overhaul its investment strategy
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Country Report
Nordic Region: Going long
Sweden, with stable finances and a debt-to-GDP ratio of under 33% is an attractive safe haven for many investors. However, precisely these low debt levels have led to reduced need for longer-dated issuance, currently only 5.6% of debt outstanding. Jonathan Williams looks at reactions to the country’s recent 20-year bond exchange
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Features
Small is beautiful
Smaller companies make up the vast majority of the economy, are better-aligned with shareholders, more entrepreneurial – and not necessarily young and inexperienced. No wonder they both outperform and diversify large-caps, writes Nick Hamilton
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Features
Political decisions for investors
Helene Williamson outlines the complex process of assessing political risk in emerging markets and warns investors they ignore this risk their peril
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Special Report
Liability-Driven Investing:Making the trend your friend
Do absolute- return bond strategies have a role to play in LDI? Martin Steward considers the possibilities
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Special Report
Moves in microfinance
Despite suffering some negative perceptions, the asset class is cleaning up its act and gaining new fans, says Nina Röhrbein
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Features
All change
Iain Morse finds that the creation of a single, mandatory central settlement depositary later this year will have wide-ranging effects on the trading and settlement of securities in Russia
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Interviews
Making an impact on SMEs
The conviction articulated on its website – ‘We believe that market forces and entrepreneurship can be harnessed to do well by doing good’ – hardly distinguishes the £275m (€333m) London-based sustainable growth investor Bridges Ventures (Bridges) from other investors in the environmental, social or governance (ESG) domain. But its investment strategy certainly does.
