Latest from IPE Magazine – Page 512
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Features
Marè’s advice: hold your course
Italy is on the brink of dramatic changes to its pension fund market. Either the Maroni reform goes on and pension funds grow strongly, or the industry will face a new paralysis that will be detrimental to future retirees. A third way, which is going back to a very generous ...
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Features
Double challenge for open funds
COVIP (Italy’s pension fund regulatory authority) gave the first green lights to open pension funds OPFs) in July 1998 following legislation originally enacted in 1993. So far they have not been particularly effective. Therefore, the past government decided to pass a new reform originally scheduled for 2006 but which has ...
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Features
Reform comes to a crossroads
After three and a half reforms during the past decade, restructuring the pension system is no longer a top priority in the Italian political agenda. The newly appointed Prodi government, however, will hardly be able to ignore the issue, as Mario Draghi, the new governor of the Bank of Italy, ...
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Features
Regional funds reach the parts
The recent pension reform, approved by the former Berlusconi government with law decree 252/05, permits Italian regions to set up ‘regional’ pension funds. This development seems quite unique in Europe: why should regions be empowered to set up their own pension funds? Under Italian law (law decree 124/93 reformed with ...
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Features
Reducing the deficit top priority
With the third largest budget deficit in the world, Italy needs its bond market to be more attractive than ever to investors. Now that Romano Prodi is officially in charge, the realities of sorting out the burgeoning deficit hit home hard. He has acknowledged that the public accounts are in ...
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Features
Legislation changes in nutshell
The law decree 5 December 2005 n.252, in application of the last pension reform (law 23 August 2004 n.243), has significantly modified the current law on pension funds (law decree 21 April 1993, n.124). The new law is likely to pave the way for major change in Italian pensions, moving ...
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Features
Persuading the silent majority
The slow development of Italian pension funds is mainly due to the lack of resources to finance them. Neither the companies nor the employees have ‘serious money’ to put into the funds. Contributions made to the pension funds by companies and employees so far have been almost nominal (ie, a ...
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Features
A noise about silence
The much delayed reform of the pension system is finally due to be implemented at the beginning of 2008. Not a moment too soon. While the date has slipped continuously over the years the urgency for reform grows in sympathy, as the fortunes of the new generation of pension funds ...
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Features
UCITS denied pensions access
There has been some progress made recently towards prising open the market for UCITS funds - repeatedly touted by the European Commission (EC) as one of the key investment vehicles for retirement savings - but for many market participants things have not gone far enough. Those advocating a tighter linkage ...
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Features
Fascinated by formulas
What was your first full-time job – and do you remember what you were paid at the time? In 1961 I took what I intended to be a job during a school holiday at what turned out to be an actuarial bureau. I was paid 375 gilders (€170) per month. ...
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Features
Global liquidity under threat?
Yield curve/duration An uncomfortable unease is permeating all asset classes across all markets. What will the Fed chairman Bernanke do next? Go for more tightening to show the markets that he too is as tough on inflation as his hugely respected predecessor? Or will he wait, giving the US economy ...
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Features
Shunning the black box
Imagine you are at a cocktail party by Lake Geneva on a warm summer evening, perhaps in Lausanne or Montreux. And as you sip a drink and enjoy the view of the sun setting behind the mountains you are aware of an ambiance of good feeling, you see people networking ...
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Features
Devil is in FX detail
Direct and in many cases very significant financial benefit can accrue to pension funds and investment managers that pay closer attention to their foreign exchange (FX) trades. UK-based benchmarking firm Amaces has launched a new module in its CMS analytical and benchmarking service that covers all FX deals. The module ...
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Special Report
Breaking down the barriers
While investor portfolios become more global investor knowledge on what their rights are as shareholders and how to exercise them in the cross-border context struggles to keep up – to put it mildly. Cue the new handbook from the Eurosif, Active Share Ownership in Europe. Eurosif notes that “the publication ...
