Latest from IPE Magazine – Page 495
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Features
One share, one vote
US research suggests that the one share, one vote principle could benefit corporate efficiency. Brussels is looking at the issue but will it take heed, asks Jeremy Woolf
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Features
Beware ridiculous investment cases
Although commodity markets have been around for centuries, investors’ interest in them has always been quite limited. Over the last few years, however, this has changed completely. Commodities have very quickly become very popular and investment in commodities is growing at an unprecedented rate. It is estimated that over the ...
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Features
Goldilocks or stagnation?
With beta back in vogue, the time could be ripe for some thinking outside the box, says Georg Inderst
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Features
Back to basics
Pension funds are recognising that getting asset allocation right is an essential first principle. Rachel Fixsen reports
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Features
The shape of things to come
Liability driven investment (LDI) has become a high priority in shaping asset allocation for some pension funds in Europe where full-funding is a necessity, but some say there are complicated issues around it. In many continental European countries, liability-driven investment is less of a driving force within asset allocation than ...
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Features
Who manages the managers?
Penny Green suggests that some companies are risking overall pension costs by not paying enough attention to the less glamorous operational tasks at hand
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Features
No easy entry strategy
Opinion is divided on whether European small and mid caps can add sufficient value to a manager’s overall portfolio. Joseph Mariathasan reports
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Features
Filling in an empty space
Hedge funds and private equity have the depth of experience needed, argue proponents of restructuring. David White reports
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Features
Building up pensions or pulling them down?
Europe’s financial supervisory authorities are in an invidious position with regard to occupational pensions. They are damned if they do tighten up on regulation of pensions schemes and damned if they do not. The collapse of the equity markets early in the new century clearly called for some tough action by regulators, but was the action too tough?
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Features
Shining a new light on an old continent
The dramatic economic changes taking place in Africa means there is a case for investors taking a closer look at what is happening, as outlined by Roelof Horne
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Features
Post-election pension blues
US pension fund industry players are bracing for the new Democratic Congress. Their lobbyists and attorneys had hoped to obtain some industry-friendly amendments to the new Pension Protection Act, signed last August by President George W Bush. But with the new Democratic majority in both the House and the Senate ...
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Features
Fine art of asset management
In the iconography of European asset management, Dexia Asset Management could be cast as the hero from zero. In the 1990s it was merely a gleam in the eye of the Franco-Belgian Dexia banking group. Today it is one of Europe’s leading asset managers, with over €100bn assets under management. ...
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Features
Green focus sets examples in returns and culture
The Bonus Pensionskassen opted as early as 1998 to adopt a sustainable socially responsible investment strategy. “We recognised way back then that companies that managed in a so-called ‘sustainable’ manner represented good long-term value and produced more attractive returns,” the scheme says. Since then, Bonus claims it has consistently implemented ...
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Features
Stress-tests build confidence in future funding levels
Founded in 1968, Amonis is the professional pension scheme for Belgium’s doctors, dentists and pharmacists. It is a hybrid defined benefit and defined contribution structure with €932m under management for some 23,300 active members and 3,500 pensioners. Amonis entered the IPE Awards on the back of its confidence in the ...
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Features
Innovation is watchword for scheme that makes most of new legislation
Robert Bosch, a leading German industrial company with 250,000 employees worldwide, of whom 110,000 are in Germany, established its pension scheme, Bosch Pensionsfonds (BPF), in 2002, making full use of legislation in Germany encouraging the creation of funded pension schemes to replace the traditional but somewhat creaking pay-as-you-go and Pensionskassen ...
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Features
Small scheme that thinks big
Don’t be fooled by size. Small can be beautiful. The Robert Bosch scheme is small but it has a big heart and even bigger ambition. It has already notched up a series of firsts: first Pensionsfonds-type scheme to be offered by an industrial group in Germany; the first to receive ...
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Features
Setting new standards for Polish corporate governance
As a former member of the Eastern Bloc and a new member of the EU, Poland is experiencing not only rapid economic growth but a fundamental restructuring of its economy. So the development of good corporate governance standards among the investing community is not only a necessity, it is a ...
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Features
Deficit addressed without sacrifice of DB principles
Pension fund deficits have led to increasing pressure for the funds themselves to switch from a defined benefit (DB) to a defined contribution (DC) basis - and this generally means reduced benefits for scheme members. Like many other British DB schemes, the BAE Systems Pension Scheme faced the challenge of ...
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Features
Joining forces to cut costs and boost capacity
Innovation “is our competitive advantage,” boasts Denmark’s PKA Pension Funds collective. It cites four areas it believes backs up this claim: its outsourcing strategy, socially responsible investments, its real estate portfolio and its hybrid structure. “The innovation in outsourcing was to achieve an effective administration policy,” the fund says. A ...
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Features
Direct investment provides instant diversification
Established in 1992, Denmark’s Industriens Pension (IP) is a young scheme, and perhaps its youth explains its dynamic approach to private equity at a time when older, somewhat more established, schemes still regard the burgeonig asset class with a degree of scepticism and reserve. But that does not mean it ...
