Latest from IPE Magazine – Page 531
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Features
UK schemes scramble to buy linkers
The Bank of England says UK pension funds are buying index-linked gilts at virtually any price – caught in a vicious circle of falling yields and falling funding ratios. The central bank said demand for index-linked gilts from UK schemes “may have become relatively price inelastic” due to the shift ...
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Features
Unilever sets up €5bn asset pooling
Consumer products group Unilever has set up a pension asset pooling vehicle called Univest which could grow to around €3-5bn in size. The firm said Univest was expected to reduce risk and enhance net return potential. It would provide a “diversified external manager” facility for Unilever schemes worldwide. Unilever’s Dutch ...
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Features
Bostanci wins IPE scholarship
The 2005/6 IPE/AIMSE Scholarship has gone to Sibel Bostanci, head of institutional sales at investment management firm Delta Lloyd in Germany. Wiesbaden-based Bostanci will be attending the AIMSE/Wharton Investment Institute at the Wharton Business School, University of Pennsylvania. The one-week programme is designed to boost sales managers’ marketing and financial ...
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Features
A rose by any other name...
What’s in a name? The search for a new term for ‘pensions’ that might be less off-putting for scheme members is an endeavour without real appeal to those managing pension plans. The predicament is one of coming up with something that is much worse than what we have or that ...
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Features
The great bond shortage?
IPE asked three pension funds in three countries – the Netherlands, the UK and Switzerland: ‘Does the scarcity of high-quality long-term government bonds highlighted by the OECD, pose a problem?’ Here are their answers: Peter Scales, chief executive of the London Pensions Fund Authority, which has AUM of £3.2bn ...
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Features
Gearing up for global note
Four European institutions have launched an awareness campaign to prepare issuers and their agents for a new legal and holding structure for international debt securities, to be launched in June. The changeover to the new structure is being driven by EU monetary policy. The New Global Note (NGN) is a ...
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Features
MiFID on radar screen
In my June 2005 column I wrote that, given the immense scope of the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID), and the extremely tight April 2007 implementation deadline set by the European commission, “burying one’s head in the sand is patently not an option”. The good news is that in ...
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Special Report
Going with the two-way flow
Only around 20% of company reports include information on stakeholder engagement, according to a recent survey – Corporate Responsibility – a United State? – carried out by Context, a London-based corporate responsibility (CR) communications and strategy consultancy. “One can assume that if a company is not reporting on it then ...
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Special Report
Inform, on form
SRI is still a relatively new concept which is still considered by many to be some way down the list of priorities as companies and their senior executives feel the pressure to focus more and more on the bottom line. The reason it finds itself so far down the list ...
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Features
New portfolio dividing lines
Storebrand Investments, the asset management arm of the giant Norwegian insurer Storebrand, is one of the first major financial institutions in Norway to reorganise the management of its assets along lines of alpha and beta strategies rather than equities and fixed income. The asset management splits its asset management into ...
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Features
A tricky balancing act
It has been said that one of the most overused words on the UK pension scene over last few years has been found to be ‘crisis’, but that does not mean a crisis does not exist. Indeed the word ‘crisis’ has never seemed more appropriate than at the moment, and ...
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Features
Moving smartly up the agenda
It used to be a simple enough thing. Allocate to equities, and ignore your risk exposure. Strong markets, and pension surpluses, meant you didn’t have to worry. With the heady days of the 1990s gone, pension funds are facing tougher times, and risk management has become an important issue. Not ...
