Latest from IPE Magazine – Page 383
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FeaturesForest funds snapshot
Céline Claudon presents the key findings from IWC’s comprehensive database of institutional timberland investment funds
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Interviews
Breaking the bonds
Last month’s Strategically Speaking looked at how the dynamics of ageing, pension fund decumulation and tighter capital adequacy had influenced Schroders’ transformation from UK equities investor to global multi-asset manager.
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Features
Belgium’s conservative custodians
Iain Morse finds regulation change may force some smaller captive custodians to re-think their business model
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Features
Diary of an Investor: Sugary words
We have time on our hands at Wasserdicht Pension Funds. Fiduciary managers have given up calling us; they have finally understood we do not want to be a part of this inexplicable momentum, the movement that outsources everything to the hands of supposed expert practitioners. Even in this we recognise that momentum and value are negatively correlated!
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Features
TV strikes again
Zembla, a current affairs TV programme in the Netherlands, lit a firestorm in the pensions industry last month after it argued that Dutch pension funds have underperformed consistently over the past two decades, missing out on more than €145bn in unrealised returns. The programme claimed that funds had generally invested too much in risky assets and that trustees lacked the necessary expertise to look after Dutch workers’ pension savings. It even went so far as to accuse the industry of “bad management”.
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Features
Rate rise offsets returns
Rising bond yields were the bane of some Dutch pension schemes as the industrypublished its fourth-quarter and year-end results for 2010.
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Features
Plan the work, work the plan
Another month, another discussion about other comprehensive income. But more than that, the extraordinary meeting of the International Accounting Standards Board on 2 February served to underline a maxim that the London-based standard setter has consistently ignored: plan the work and work the plan.
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Features
Hey you, get onto my cloud
Martin Steward talks to SRL Global about bringing cloud-computing hedge fund portfolio infrastructure to the pensions community
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Opinion Pieces
Peter Montagnon, Senior investment adviser, Financial Reporting Council
“The Stewardship Code does not require all its adherents to behave like activists”Peter Montagnon Senior investment adviser, Financial Reporting Council
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Interviews
Hedging liabilities with benchmarks
What are your fixed income benchmarks? Stefan Ros CIO SPK Sweden Invested assets: SEK19.5bn (€2.2n) Participants: 150 sponsors and 38,000 beneficiaries 99% DB, 1% DC Funding level: 166% (Dec 2010) Date established: 1944 Approximately 70% of our overall asset allocation is ...
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Opinion Pieces
Muni transparency
US lawmakers, investors and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) are asking state and local administrations for more transparency about their pension liabilities. All are concerned that these liabilities are increasing the risk level of the $2.9trn (€2.1trn) of municipal bonds issued to balance local public budgets.
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Opinion Pieces
MEPS rush green paper follow-up
Substantial indications of the direction Brussels is likely to take on pension policy are emerging surprisingly early as a follow-up to the Commission’s policy paper of last July.
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Features
Schemes defy euro-zone uncertainty
Pension funds and investors in general faced an uncertain 2010, thanks in large part to the uncertainty around the euro-zone’s future.
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Features
Repeating the pensions mistake
Think back to 2006. Armed with a vague plan for its supposedly joint effort with the US Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB), the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) set out to address the measurement challenges presented by so-called contribution-based promises. For its part, we were led to understand that the ...
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Features
Do investment innovations work?
The current crisis will be the mother of innovation. But Amin Rajan cautions that, after a traumatic decade, it is also time for a reality check: which of the modern innovations have worked, which have not, and why?
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Country Report
Ireland: Out of the gloom
Ireland’s future once lay in financial services. What now? Christine Senior reports
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Country Report
Ireland: Ireland’s pension challenges
The Irish Association of Pension Funds’ Jerry Moriarty reviews a year in Irish occupational pensions and charts the way forward in 2011
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Country Report
Ireland: Auto-enrolment with a punch
With reforms for ailing DB schemes viewed as more urgent and in parts easier to implement than the sweeping reforms suggested for the DC sector, Ireland seems set to forget its pledge that auto-enrolment was the way forward, writes Jonathan Williams
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Country Report
Ireland: Salvation stalling
In common with defined benefit schemes across Europe, Ireland’s are facing an existential crisis, with underfunding and closures widespread. New legislation to aid the industry was promised, but a year later has failed to materialise, finds Jonathan Williams
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Country Report
Ireland: A €1bn question
The leading Irish companies contributed €1bn to pensions in the financial year 2009 but there were few substantive changes to pension arrangements, writes Conor Daly
