Latest from IPE Magazine – Page 491
-
Features
McCreevy endorses second pillar pensions
Ageing populations; shrinking work forces, are putting intense pressure on state pensions. This is driving change throughout the whole pensions system: The relationship between the state and its citizens; the nature of the pensions promises made by employers to their employees; the design of private retirement saving products. The pressure ...
-
Features
Building stronger portfolios
Pension funds should build stronger portfolios to brace themselves for worst-case scenarios rather than just researching them a panel discussion ‘Where are the markets moving and how to react’, that was moderated by Karel Stroobants, chairman of Akkermans Stroobants & Partners. “We were too often disappointed by diversification when we ...
-
Features
More needed for pan-European funds
More will need to be done for pan-European pension funds and cross-border activities to “grow and blossom”, European pension fund representatives told the sixth annual IPE Awards seminar. ABP’s pension director and European Federation for Retirement Provision president Jaap Maassen said: “I am optimistic and see progress, but there are ...
-
Features
Optimising beta
Institutional investors may be missing out on the full benefits of a core-satellite approach to portfolio investment because they are using broad market indexes as benchmarks for the core and failing to optimise the passive part of their portfolio. This was the central message of Noël Amenc, professor, finance department, ...
-
Features
Reform impetus runs out of steam
After making good progess establishing its third pillar, the Czech Republic now finds itself being overtaken by its neighbours, as George Coats reports
-
Features
Predicting a predictable New Year
Forecasting the future of the financial world is fraught with difficulty and the chances of making spectacularly bad predictions are high. Famously, Irving Fisher, a professor of economics at Yale University, said in 1929 that “stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau”. If stoics are to believed and everything is predetermined, divination is at best guesswork and at worst alarmist. However, there may be some value in educated guesses.
-
Features
Equities excel while bonds underperform
October was characterised by the improving performance of the stock markets, as indicated by the above average returns of the S&P 500, while volatility remained at the same level as the previous month, still close to its historical lows. Bond market performance declined again, reaching a low, but still positive, ...
-
Features
Credit markets set for tough year ahead
Yield curve/duration Though the US housing market continues to show significant signs of weakness, prompting economists to downgrade domestic growth forecasts, the US consumer has yet again surprised us by significantly increasing their spending rather than their savings during October. And another shock came in the form of a significantly ...
-
Features
An initiative that is starting to work
Peter Moon describes how the Enhanced Analytics Initiative is having the desired impact on investment research
-
Features
Cooperlavoro waits for the breakthrough
This Italian fund’s strong performance is beginning to attract the interest of potential members. David White talks to Flavio Casetti
-
Features
Pas de deux or danse macabre?
With a universe of 4,000 stocks and a raft of specialist managers how do investors exploit this extraordinary marketplace? Joseph Mariathasan reports
-
Features
Cornering the risk factor
To make correct investment decisions investors need a proper framework; flexible enough to realistically capture the complexity of their situation. Risk and return are crucial, that much is obvious, but how do we measure risk? Many fall back on the standard Markowitz model, defining risk as the standard deviation of ...
-
Features
Call for think tanks to help benefit systems
Nobel prize winner James Heckman calls for European think tanks to help tackle the issues facing welfare states and their pension systems. Speaking to IPE at the sidelines of the recent European Colloquia in Prague, organised by Pioneer Investments, Heckman said in order to provide pensions to their ageing populations, ...
-
Features
Time to cross the frontier?
There are over 350 frontier stocks that can be considered investible according to Constantine Papageorgiou, so a commitment to this market at an early stage could be well rewarded
-
Special Report
Microfinance enters the mainstream
Over the years, microfinance has emerged as a profitable business opportunity and a way to build local economies. When Dutch pension giant ABP, the scheme for civil servants, placed €5m in the Dexia Micro-Credit fund last year it was a sign of growing interest in this type of investment among ...
-
Special Report
Investing in Africa
Despite growing interest for emerging markets, pension funds are still hesitant about them. Peter Hinton, managing director of Enterprise Banking Group in Botswana, says that funds were not yet heavily investing in African emerging markets due to the problem of finding the right investment vehicles or entities for their investment ...
-
Features
Keeping the focus sharp
The main business of Principal Global Investors, a US asset management company with headquarters in Des Moines, is pension funds. Principal manages the assets of 10 of the 25 largest pension funds in the US and more than two thirds of its $180bn (€134bn) assets under management belong to pension ...
-
Features
Switch to DC set to continue
More politics for state pension funds, more cuts for corporate defined benefit (DB) plans. This is year 2007 in a nutshell for the US retirement industry. With only one year away from the 2008 presidential election and a bullish Wall Street helping assets’ growth, state retirement systems feel less the ...
-
Features
Giving risk every chance to earn
Germany’s largest independent pension provider, the Munich-based BVK multi-employer fund that runs €40bn is assets for 12 different professional and occupational groups has taken the next steps in developing its approach to asset allocation by making risk management core to the process. The introduction of the fund’s new risk budgeting ...
