Latest from IPE Magazine – Page 493
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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 ...
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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, ...
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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
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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Features
Groupe expects changes to assumptions under IORP
The Groupe Consultatif Actuariel Européen says it expects to see “significant” changes in the way discount rates and other pension fund assumptions are determined under the occupational pension fund directive. The Groupe, which represents European Union actuarial associations, has issued a 26-page study called ‘Minimum Technical Provisions for Defined Benefit ...
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Features
More than just a pressing need to know
Pension funds need more formal skills to deal with the plethora of new developments in the sector – from the flood of new investment products to changes in finance, pension and social legislation. Rachel Fixsen reports
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Special Report
Skilled delegates the way to ensure democracy
Paid pension fund staff clearly need thorough training in the business area relevant to their role. But the decision-making process at a fund involves many others. In Denmark, more pension funds are taking a serious look at the skills of their delegates elected by members, says Claus Skadhauge, head of ...
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Features
IAS19 under scrutiny
Nina Röhrbein looks at what impact the IAS19 accounting standards review is likely to have on DC and DB schemes across Europe
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Features
Entering into the 26th regime
Proposals for 26th regime pension products come under the critical gaze of the Dutch pension insurers association working party on these products
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Features
Airlines' excess pensions baggage
In the cut-throat world of air transport, one of the biggest upheavals has been the arrival of the no-frills airlines. But it is not only in ticket pricing where these airlines have been able to undercut the national carriers. They have far lower pension costs too. And these add to ...
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Features
Asset pooling steals the limelight
However desirable a pan-European pension fund might be, pension asset pooling is what is on offer currently, Nina Röhrbein finds
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Features
Bonds to the rescue? It’s a blip
The numbers pack a punch. In the autumn Mercer reported that the pension fund liabilities of the top 50 mainland European companies totalled £72bn - compared with a £45bn funding gap for their UK FTSE 100 counterparts. Notably, pensions risk exposure in Germany’s Dax 30 companies was 20% higher than ...
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Features
Dealing with the new giants
The role of pension funds needs to be rethought, according to a group of academics who presented their views in a recent Geneva Association paper. Lans Bovenberg reports
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Features
Finnish proposal garners support
Twenty five EU member states are backing a diluted version of the directive on portability of supplementary pensions, as Jeremy Woolf reports
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Features
The disruptive power of innovation
In the second of the series, Amin Rajan and Jervis Smith argue that beneath the surface of booming markets fund management is changing irrevocably
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Features
When multinational pooling pays off
Having a pooling policy can lead to a more co-ordinated benefit strategy. Jeremy Hill discusses the findings of a recent survey
