Latest from IPE Magazine – Page 404
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Features
Do as I say, not as I do
Consider this statement by International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) member Patricia McConnell in June 2006: “Is General Motors necessarily bankrupt because it has a huge pension obligation? No, as long as you can look at future obligations and say it will pay down that liability.”
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Features
Funds boost engagement
Pension funds have stepped up their corporate engagement processes in 2010 with the widely-backed campaign for more disclosure on the costs and impacts of Canadian oil sands projects.
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Features
Preparing for the challenges ahead
The recent Global Pension Survey highlights a number of positive changes that pension fund managers are implementing to develop a business model that works in bull and bear markets alike. Changing demographics, pensions reforms in mature economies and fickle financial markets are creating strong tail-winds. But the ride will be ...
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Features
Keeping the global engine cool
Emerging markets might not have suffered the same financial pains as developed markets during the credit crisis, but Maha Khan Phillips finds they have a host of fiscal and monetary decisions to make as things get back to normal
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Features
BVK’s new risk criteria
Liquidity is now a key issue for the €43.2bn Bayerische Versorgungskammer (BVK), Germany’s largest institutional investor, but the fund is not shying away from diversification.
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Opinion Pieces
The state we are in
In the US, most defined benefit (DB) pension schemes are public and their members are employees of states, municipalities and other local administrations. Their future to a great extent depends on their members’ unions: if the unions refuse to accept radical reforms in order to reduce the growing fund deficits, the current funding crisis will become explosive, say two new reports by independent research institutes. The budget season and the November elections are helping to draw attention to this vital issue.
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Opinion Pieces
IORPs back on agenda
A planned wide-ranging green paper on the state of pensions in the EU is causing anxiety in the industry. The ‘holistic’ approach of the European Commission policy paper – due to be presented in the summer – could throw into question the current ceasefire over the solvency issue for the ...
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Features
Cautious optimism in first GPS study
The first Global Pensions Survey (GPS) got off to a good start in February in the first phase of its launch, with a total of 78 European pension fund respondents from 16 countries in the initial round.
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Features
Irish reforms under fire
More than two years after the Irish government first published its green paper on reforms to the pension system, the National Pensions Framework has been unveiled, proposing increases in state retirement age and auto-enrolment into pensions.
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Opinion Pieces
Boost to derivatives legislation
Flesh is being added to the bones of the proposed regulation to cover legislation of the vast derivatives markets in the EU, and the European Parliament’s EP Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee (ECON) is generally welcoming of the tough stance put forward by its co-ordinating MEP.
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Opinion Pieces
Derivatives not WMD
Derivatives, and credit-default swaps in particular, have become synonymous with Wall Street wrongdoings, and in Europe authorities want to tightly regulate them, even ban speculative derivative trades. President Obama has promised reforms that would fix problems in the derivatives market, starting with trading all derivatives onto transparent exchanges.
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Opinion Pieces
Danyelle Guyatt, Mercer & Jon Lukomnik, IRRC Institute
“The problems start when so-called long-horizon managers play the short-term game”
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Features
Regulation roundup
Gail Moss highlights key legislative and regulatory developments for pensions across seven European countries
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Country ReportGermany: Risiko!
Many German institutions already use their tight risk budgets to finance minimum returns. Now, with inflation on the horizon, the task is to allocate risk effectively, writes Nina Röhrbein
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Country Report
Germany: Local and global
Nina Röhrbein assesses the state of play in the German asset consulting marketplace following the merger of Towers Perrin and Watson Wyatt
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Country Report
Germany: A pan-German conundrum
Greater subsidiarity for the 16 German provinces could lead to a multitude of pensionprovision regulations for civil servants and significant mobility problems, finds Barbara Ottawa
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Country Report
Germany: Pensions at a time of rising PSV contribution rates
Nikolaus Schmidt-Narischkin assesses the problems arising from increasing corporatecontributions to Germany’s PSV pension guarantee system
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Country Report
Germany: Risk and occupational pensions
Nigel Cresswell, Wolfram Horneff and Stephan Wildner assess risk management techniques
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Country Report
Germany: BilMoG reforms ring the changes
Günter Hainz and Georg Thurnes assess the implications of the new BilMoG accounting rules for pension liabilities
