Latest from IPE Magazine – Page 369
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Features
MNOPF to reshape UK fiduciary landscape?
When the Merchant Navy Officers’ Pension Fund (MNOPF) announced it was appointing Towers Watson as delegated CIO, the UK pension industry took notice. While the £3.3bn (€3.7bn) scheme may not be big compared with some of the Dutch pension giants, it is influential in the UK, especially with its appointment establishing Towers in UK fiduciary management.
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Features
AIMA pushes for increased alignment
Eat your own cooking – that is the advice of CalPERS’s Kurt Silberstein, who recommends hedge fund managers add a little more of themselves to the pot if they want to entice pension funds to the table. In common parlance, hedge funds must do more to ‘align interests’ with investors.
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Features
Bernardino: Solvency II not a simple exercise
With the introduction of Solvency II less than a year and a half away, the pensions industry is still unclear what kind of regime it will face and how aspects of the Directive, drafted for insurance companies, may be applied to diverse European pensions.
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Features
Systemic reforms just a utopian dream
Experts and analysts believe the idea of a systemic reform of France’s pension industry faces major hurdles and that it is unlikely to be implemented due to funding and political wrangling. They also say that building up a new pension regime from scratch would be the best way to simplify the French system and avoid increasing the deficit.
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Features
Pointless chatter
Without any irony, the IASB is about to give you the opportunity to take part in a consultation process on the future shape of its entire work plan. As a 15 June IASB meeting paper explains: “The consultation process was introduced by the trustees of the IFRS Foundation in 2010 in response to comments received during the constitution review of the IFRS Foundation.” A good time to revisit pension plan measurement? Reality check.
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FeaturesInvestment innovations: a scorecard
Pension plans have an open mind about innovations, say Neeraj Sahai, Jim McCaughan and Amin Rajan
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Opinion Pieces
Lee Hollingworth - Head of Defined Contribution at Hymans Robertson
“In our view, the open market option should be the default for all schemes”
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Features
Convergence over harmonisation
Niels Kortleve, Barthold Kuipers and Wilfried Mulder offer reasons why the European Commission should focus on convergence of EU pension regulation rather than harmonisation
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Features
Pressure to scale up to hold down costs
Gail Moss looks at how multinational companies are grappling with pension scheme underfunding in the face of rising longevity pension scheme underfunding in the face of rising longevity
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Features
Keen on illiquidity
Peter Wallach of the UK’s Merseyside Pension Fund tells Nina Röhrbein how the scheme’s philosophy affects its investment strategy
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Features
Should fiduciaries manage assets?
Anton Van Nunen writes on the changing role of fiduciary managers. Should they manage pension assets themselves despite the potential conflict of interest?
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FeaturesNordic investors warm to EMD
Investors in Nordic countries show rising interest in emerging market debt as a way to take part in the emerging market story. Jan Willers reports on findings of a recent survey
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Features
An avarice for absolute return
Pirkko Juntunen looks at the unique pension investment policy employed by Swedish construction company Skanska
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Features
Event horizons
Martin Steward finds an unusual corporate event cycle teeing up opportunities for event-driven hedge funds – but not necessarily classic merger arbitrage or distressed debt
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Asset Class Reports
Structured Credit: Alphabet soup: a second helping
Joseph Mariathasan takes a look at the structured credit and loans markets and finds a surprising abundance of reasons to tuck back into the alphabet soup, even after significant spread-tightening
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Special Report
A tailor-made trend
Nina Röhrbein reports on a recent surge in demand for sustainable indices, but questions whether they match client needs
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Special Report
The future of cleantech
Investors in the cleantech industry are not just funding the development of environmentally conscious business, argues Paul Corren. While the technology is developed to do that, it is also focused on reducing costs and improving efficiency
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Special Report
Measuring social impact
Work needs to be done to standardise the measurement of the social impact of investments. Michele Giddens warns against oversimplifying the question
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Interviews
‘Adjacency’, or the art of step-by-step
It is tempting, just because it is so good at it, to think of the $11bn (€7.8bn) London-based hedge fund manager CQS as a credit specialist. But founder Michael Hintze is keen to emphasise its broader strengths. “We are a big hedge fund, but we do more than simply provide absolute returns in credit,” he says. “Nowadays we are a global multi-strategy, multi-asset management firm providing hedge fund, long only and bespoke solutions for clients.”
