Latest from IPE Magazine – Page 402
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Asset Class ReportsUS Equities: Style bias
Joseph Mariathasan uncovers a wide range of strategies among top performers in US equities
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Special ReportPortfolio Construction: Broaden your horizons
On the hunt for truly diversified sources of risk, Martin Steward takes aim at different investment time horizons
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Features
Survival of the fittest
Surviving the financial meltdown has left the strongest names ready to monopolise the wave of public and private sector refinancing. But Richard Hemming still finds that a return to the heady valuations of the pre-crisis unlikely
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Country Report
Turkey: Foreign pension players
Expect market consolidation in Turkey’s young private pensions sector. Reeta Paakkinen outlines the issues behind this as 13 pension insurance companies battle for a market of two million, with the potential to grow tenfold
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Features
Does compulsion work?
Gail Moss looks at whether compulsory contributions make for better workplace pensions
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Opinion Pieces
Con Keating, head of research at Brighton Rock Group
“The optimal distribution of risk between member and sponsor is complex”
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Features
Open and above board
A chat about catching a plane would seem on the face of it to be a fairly innocuous event. Indeed, amid much fanfare, North Korea’s Kim Jong-Il recently jetted into China. Chairman of the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) Sir David Tweedie’s staff, however, demanded that his trip to Japan be shrouded in more secrecy than the dictator’s.
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Features
Regime change effects
UK pension funds, consultants and asset managers had been hoping for some form of political certainty ever since the run-up to the general election in May. The outgoing Labour government had set in train a number of pension reform measures, including the launch of its National Employment Savings Trust (NEST) in 2012, designed to sweep up UK workers with no existing pension provision through new auto-enrolment regulations.
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Features
Solvency fears persist
The European Union’s decision to establish a special purpose vehicle with funds of up to €500bn to provide loans to euro-zone countries caused an initial rise in equity markets. But while it addressed liquidity problems, there remain concerns about solvency issues.
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Opinion Pieces
Ratings war
Two new developments in the recent rating agency drama could radically change the way pension funds manage their bond portfolios. One is the a court decision allowing the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS), the largest state pension fund in the US, to go ahead with a lawsuit against Moody’s, S&P and Fitch, which it claims caused it to lose about $1bn (€809m) because of inaccurate ratings. The other development is the US Senate’s approval of an amendment to the financial reform proposed by Florida Republican George LeMieux and Washington Democrat Maria Cantwell to remove references to the raters from the laws governing securities and banking.
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Opinion Pieces
Worse than it looks
The forthcoming loss of Jörgen Holmquist, director general, and David Wright, deputy director-general, two of the most senior and experienced officials from the European Commission’s division responsible for legislation for the banking, insurance, free movement of capital, pensions and capital reserves sectors is bad enough. But accusations that there is a shortage of personnel preparing a “crazy number of legislative initiatives” make the losses worse in this time of crisis.
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Special Report
Thematic Investing: Variations on a theme
There are as many definitions of thematic investing as there are thematic investors. Martin Steward asks how significant themes really are as drivers of managers’ risk
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Country Report
France: Tactical moves
In a country of defined contribution schemes, French pensions have historically been risk averse. Nina Röhrbein reports on whether this trend in asset allocation is continuing
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Asset Class ReportsPrivate Equity: Coping with the hangover
After the big binge on leverage, Joseph Mariathasan finds that the next generation of private equity investors will have to go cold turkey, not rely on a hair of the dog
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Special Report
Thematic Investing: Themes or fads?
Thematic investing in public markets is often biased towards small-caps with emerging business models or technologies. But Joseph Mariathasan finds that the process does not translate smoothly into private equity
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Special Report
Thematic Investing: Beloved, unloved cleantech
The market-wide sell-off, competition from Asia and the debacle at COP15 has put a dent in the cleantech theme for now, finds Nina Röhrbein. But this only makes the still robust long-term story look better value
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Country ReportFrance: A double tax burden
Gilles Dureuil outlines taxation changes that will affect defined benefit pensions in France
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Asset Class Reports
Private Equity: Don’t overlook the hidden costs
Cyril Demaria looks at factors that can generate substantial costs for large institutional investors apart from the usual direct and indirect costs associated with investing in private equity funds
