Latest from IPE Magazine – Page 535
-
Special Report
A question of best practice
For trustees and board members of pension funds in Europe, life has never been harder. A decade ago, things looked rosy. Pension funds were in surplus, and funding levels were not a concern. Pension schemes were posting strong double digit returns, allowing contribution holidays, and spending almost next to no ...
-
Special Report
Structured approaches
A two-tiered internal governance structure is being proposed in the Netherlands, the country that is leading on governance in Europe, and where the issue has been under debate for the last few years. Currently, according to the OECD, pension funds are incorporated legal entities separate from the sponsor, and have ...
-
Special Report
Crying need for governance
Most industry participants agree that education has to be the foremost concern. “A lot of boards until recently have been made up of gifted amateurs rather than professionals. There is an expectation that this will change,” says Elizabeth Renshaw-Ames, a worldwide partner at Mercer Investment Consulting. She points out that ...
-
Features
Tour de force?
The French seem to enjoy making things complicated and in constructing their system of retirement provision they have been true to form. With a mesmerising combination of federations, associations, institutions, groups and sub-groups, observers have their work cut out to make their way round the complex maze that is the ...
-
Features
Achievements and challenges
The euro has very rapidly created a zone of monetary stability in Europe. The average inflation rate in the euro area has been a little above 2%. This is somewhat above the level of what the ECB defines as price stability, but a good performance in view of the increases ...
-
Features
Limited impact so far
When the former Chinese premier Zhou En-lai was asked about the effect of the French Revolution on the world, he is famously said to have quipped that it was too early to tell. His words come to mind when we think about the effect of the euro on equity markets. ...
-
Features
The secret of our success
That dream has come true in less than a decade. The euro bond market has indeed grown in size and depth to an equivalent of the US market. Yet, in many respects that market is at present different and will keep in the future its own roots and peculiarities. The ...
-
Features
Plus ça change
The euro’s birth was a monumental event in monetary world history. On 1 January 1999 the euro replaced 10 national currencies that had been used for decades, or centuries, to make domestic and international transactions. The euro also eliminated the ability of central banks in the participating countries to use ...
-
Features
Without a ripple
One of the largest pension funds for professionals in the Netherlands, the Doctors Pensions Fund Services (DPFS), recently outsourced the management of its assets from its in-house investment management team to external asset managers. The transfer which involved the movement of €11bn of DPFS assets, was probably the largest transition ...
-
Features
Block trading: horses for courses
One component of transition management that has grown in importance is block trading. As its name implies, this involves the trading of large blocks of shares between institutions. Historically, the problem with block trading is that there is no wholesale market for shares. Large institutional investors trade in the same ...
-
Features
Only place to go to outperform
European investors often have a very strong domestic bias in their equity portfolios, allocating investment elsewhere to global mandates. While many global managers see the US market as a whole expensive and are accordingly underweight, this overall view is heavily influenced by the top 250 stocks which account for 70% ...
-
Features
Allocation gap for alternatives
Ever since Gary Brinson’s 1986 publication of a paper demonstrating that asset allocation is the dominant factor in determining the return of a portfolio, strategic asset allocation has been accepted as important. When it comes, however, to including alternative asset classes in an overall asset allocation framework, the industry is ...
-
Features
Why custody is no commodity
What is the real cost or benefit of custody activities and how can you work with your custodian, or perhaps fund managers, to improve the bottom line? Custody activities have been often criticised as opaque. Perhaps the arrangements were only reviewed once every three years or more. Not only was ...
-
Features
The power of the 'case method'
If you felt some tremors on 25 October, the cause may have been the animated debate at the University of Toronto’s Rotman school of management about the right financial policies for the Public Sector Employee Retirement System (PERS). The participants in the debate were the 55 attendees to a colloquium ...
