Latest from IPE Magazine – Page 526
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Features
UK bonds meet robust demand
The Debt Management Office in the UK says its auction of long-dated government bonds has met a “robust result”. A DMO spokesman declined to speculate on the buyers. But he said: “It’s a fair bet they’ll find their way to the people you’d expect to be buying.” He cited statistics ...
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Features
Pensions promises - made to be broken?
Faced with demographic and accounting pressures, many European companies that sponsor defined benefit (DB) pension plans are seeking to change the terms of this promise by moving the pension fund risk they bear from themselves to their employees. The simplest way for them to do this is to close the ...
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Features
Going for full disclosure
IPE asked three pension funds in three countries – in Austria, Estonia and Portugal – the same question: ‘What factors do you have to disclose?’ Here are their answers: Robert Kitt is fund manager at Estonia’s Hansa Investment Funds which has second pillar AUM of €155m and third ...
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Special Report
Driving the outcome
As the links between intangibles – environmental policy for example – and corporate performance are strengthened so it is clear that they also are generating an increasingly large portion of corporate growth and shareholder value. This explains the increasing demand for information about these aspects of corporate activity, from the ...
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Special Report
Taking things seriously
Socially responsible investment specialists EIRIS have found that 24% of companies worldwide have good or advanced systems in place to manage social, environmental and other ethical (SEE) risks. Published recently, the survey, entitled ‘SEE Risk Management: An analysis of its adoption by companies’, analysed companies in Europe, the Asia-Pacific region ...
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Features
Changing managers can destroy value
The hiring and firing of investment managers by institutional investors in the UK and US can be a value-destroying activity, according to a report by global investment consultant Watson Wyatt. The paper states there is “room for improvement” on the part of institutional investors when it comes to decisions about ...
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Features
Activity across a broad front
In two years’ time the status of Belgium’s self-employed as the poor relations of state pension provision should be a thing of the past. This is one of a number of challenging projects that have been exercising the powers that be in Belgium. The idea was that the self employed ...
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Features
The challenges lying ahead
Hugo Clemeur of the Association of Belgian Pension Funds, Brussels Apart from the preoccupations caused generally by the demographic evolution compounded with slow economic growth, the second pillar pensions sector in Belgium faces a number of challenges of which I would mention only three, although many more could be mentioned ...
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Features
Working in a data minefield
Sector funds were introduced at the beginning of 2004 following the enactment of the Vandenbroucke Law to broaden membership of second pillar schemes. While this aim is well on the way to being achieved other challenges remain. When the law became effective, some sectors already had in place a Fonds ...
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Features
Consultants refocus agenda
The law on occupational pensions in Belgium and the European pension fund directive both have a major impact on the management of occupational pensions, says Jos Verlinden of M&P Consult. “Although the directive in itself does not bring a revolution to pension funds in Belgium, the supervisory authority has drafted ...
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Features
Making virtue of necessity
After the Second World War, Belgium developed a broad social security system that differentiated between different kinds of profession. Different schemes were set up for employees, the self-employed and civil servants. The decree of 28 December 1944 provided the populace with legally regulated and guaranteed protection, funded by contributions from ...
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Features
A guarantee of limitations
Last month one of the most famous monuments in Belgium and star of the 1958 World Expo - the Atomium - re-opened after more than a year of renovation work. Newly gleaming in the crisp winter sunshine, this remarkable structure of giant interconnected mirrored spheres presents an enduring – though ...
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Features
Allocation helps double returns
The median Belgian pension fund posted a return of +16.9% over the year 2005, according to Mercer’s Pension Investment Performance Service (PIPS) survey. This figure exceeds the averasge return posted by Belgian Association of Pension Funds of 15.1%. This excellent result is attributable to the strong performance of equity markets. ...
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Features
Reformed character
In terms of geographical size and population, Belgium is one of the Euro-zones’s smaller member states, However back in the early 1990s Belgium was in the ignominious position of having one of Europe’s largest debt burdens. The financial figures at that time were especially grim: Belgian national debt as a ...
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Features
The 'generation pact' policy
Considering the expected demographic developments in Belgium, the level of employment in is too low, as a result of which the social security scheme being based on repartition (active people finance the social security system on behalf of inactive people) will come under pressure. In order to safeguard the Belgian ...
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Features
Among the EU's 'bad' citizens
The IORP directive, while calling for more transparency in pension matters, could hardly be regarded as an example of transparency itself. Clarity and transparency are indeed probably the most missed items in the directive. Therefore, the correct transposition into national laws is not always a foregone conclusions. The directive should ...
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Features
How to keep in the swim
With defined benefit and defined contribution pension funds totalling around €13bn, Belgium is a minnow compared to its neighbour the Netherlands. However, its status as a Euronext market and as a member of Euroclear Group mean it is not left on the sidelines by securities services players. Renaud Vandenplas, location ...
