Latest from IPE Magazine – Page 462
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Features
Playing the away game
Oslo Pensjonsforsikring is Norway’s largest local authority pension scheme. Named after the city it represents and with assets of €4.4bn, it manages and provides pensions income and benefits for some 30,000 active members, 23,000 deferred members and almost 56,000 pensioners who work or have worked in the Norwegian capital’s public sector.
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That special touch
Inarcassa’s approach to its investments since it was privatised 12 years ago has been both innovative and diligently planned.
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Features
A little bit more can go a long, long way
Sweden’s public sector AP3 scheme, one of the Swedish government’s four state buffer funds, has had a bit of a rough ride recently. After achieving the lofty heights of 17.7% returns for what it must have considered a stable portfolio at the time, last year’s 9.5% has led to a rethink that has seen AP3 once again walk away with a couple of IPE’s renowned European pensions awards – not least the one featured here as Sweden’s best scheme.
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Features
One step ahead of the law
Switzerland’s €2bn ABB Pension Fund is no slave to regulation and even claims the way it interprets pensions law in the rich Alpine state has enhanced the way the regulations have evolved there.
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Features
Default dilemmas
Now that the US Department of Labor (DoL) has defined which default investments for 401(k) participants are right, will employers’ lives be easier? Not necessarily.
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Features
Reaping the benefits
Funds of funds continued their healthy performance in October, and the Eurekahedge Fund of Funds index rose an impressive 3% during the month.These returns came on the back of strong performance of underlying hedge funds, which did well against the back drop of soaring equity-prices, surging commodity-prices, and further declines ...
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Features
Acclimatising to normal life
Alan Steele retired earlier this year as director of finance at the London Borough of Hounslow with oversight of the borough’s pension scheme, which has assets of £480m (€666m). He talks to George Coats about his career
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Features
Bank paper takes hit after subprime crisis
Yield curve/durationAnother rate cut from the US Federal Reserve was announced in the midst of some very ugly reporting numbers from several of the leading US investment banks. In its accompanying statement after announcing the quarter point cut, the Fed made it very clear that this was to be the ...
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Features
Fully funded
Sandy Flight, chief exchequer officer, Dundee City Council in Scotland, tells David White that the main objective of Tayside Superannuation Fund is to maximise overall return within reasonable risk parameters, and that means having a clear asset allocation strategy and sticking to it
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Features
Taking on the alternatives
IPE asked three pension services – in Croatia, Sweden and the Netherlands – the same question: ‘What is your attitude to alternative investments?’ Here are their answers:
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Features
Broadening the options
New regulation may go some way towards widening the investment possibilities for Spain’s pension funds, Iain Morse finds
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Phasing in changes
There is movement on the state pension front in Portugal, Iain Morse finds
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Actors in search of a role
Investment consultants have yet to carve our much of a niche in the Spanish pensions market, George Coats finds
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Features
Custodians warm to Spain
Good fundamentals are attracting securities services providers but there are hurdles for non-resident investors, writes Heather McKenzie
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Features
Waiting in limbo
Among the challenges facing Spain’s pension funds is regulatory sclerosis, George Coats writes
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Features
Widening the remit
A law has been drafted allowing Spain’s reserve fund to invest in equities. But, as George Coats finds, its details and timescale are still unknown
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Features
Excellence across the board
This year’s IPE awards again sees a bumper crop of entries at an excellent standard.
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Features
Reshaped returns help to unscramble risk puzzle
The Best Finnish Pension Fund in this year’s IPE Awards is VR Pension Fund (Division B), one of a range of pension plans for employees of Finnish Railways. VRPF has won the accolade for its achievements in efficiently reshaping the return distribution of its portfolio, as well as minimising asset/liability ...
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Features
Fund looks into the future and sees Asia
Few pension schemes can afford to sell off their equity holdings and pursue a strategy that excludes this major asset class. The UK’s pharmacist and drugstore group, Boots, famously did it a few years back, but the sensationalist media failed to mention that theirs was a very mature scheme that ...
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Features
Beta management keeps market risk in check
Market risk management is one of the most important issues facing European pension funds today. APK, the Austrian multi-employer pension fund, has strong convictions about the importance of market risk management.
