Latest from IPE Magazine – Page 514
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Features
Go forth and multiply - or pay
Adult children have historically been the pensions providers of the elderly, providing their parents with financial support, shelter, or care. In the past, this arrangement gave couples a strong incentive for having children. Today, as the Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal predicted, state pay-as-you-go (PAYG) systems have removed this incentive. Pensions ...
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Features
Quenching the thirst
For many years Cyprus was a rather inaccessible economy. Artificially high interest rates and restrictions on the movement of capital did not inspire much thought or creativity, to put it mildly. And as the island’s abundant sunshine contrasted starkly with its reputation for shady dealings, money laundering being the primary ...
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Features
Challenges of running a pension fund in the Cypriot way
We are at the point where pension funds in Cyprus are trying to be move into a new era of more modern management under the European standards. It is a transition period from amateurism to more professional management of pension funds and that’s why the challenges of running such a ...
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Features
Why scheme members are key
Peter Scales is retiring as chief executive of the £3.5bn (€5bn) London Pensions Fund Authority (LPFA) and will leave the post at the end of the year. George Coats asks the questions What was your first full-time job – do you remember what you were paid at the time? ...
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Features
Bulls vie with bears
Yield curve/duration While investors may have been just slightly sceptical about the eye-opening rise in the German Ifo index, taking it to a 15-year high, news that the European Commission composite index was also on the rise, up for the fifth consecutive month to its highest level for five years, ...
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Features
Exponential growth for Doverie
One of the effects of Bulgaria’s accession to the European Union next year would be to relax significantly the investment restrictions on the country’s second and third pillar pension funds. Bulgaria has already relaxed its investment restrictions on pension fund investment to conform with European pension legislation. This has removed ...
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Features
Irresistible rise of IMM funds
Over the last 10 years, investment in European triple-A rated institutional money market funds has been nothing short of remarkable. Since their inception, funds under management have grown to a figure of around $243bn (€191bn) as at 31st December 2005* – making it one of the fastest growing investment products ...
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Features
Europeans play pick and mix
As the deepest and most liquid market in the global investment universe, the US debt market cannot be ignored. But while it may provide an ocean of liquidity, has demand for US Treasuries, particularly from foreign investors, turned the ocean sterile for investors looking for sustenance? As Alex Over, director ...
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Features
German association fears for corporate pensions
Boy-Jürgen Andresen, chairman of German occupational pensions association Aba, has warned that the further development of corporate pensions in Germany is in peril unless the government prolongs a social tax exemption for defined contribution schemes. The social tax exemption for the DC schemes, created by the Riester reforms of 2001, ...
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Features
Benign conditions boost Irish schemes
Benign conditions, including higher bond yields and strong equity and property markets, have boosted the health of Irish defined benefit pension schemes in the first quarter, according to Mercer Investment Consulting. According to Mercer estimates, average funding ratios have improved by between 10% and 15% from the end of 2005 ...
