Latest from IPE Magazine – Page 536
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Features
Asset allocation game
The asset allocation game was chaired by Karel Stroobants of Akkerman Stroobants in Brussels and focused on how the imaginary ‘Easy Going’ pension fund should handle its asset allocation, on which the attendees were invited to vote. Six asset management executives - Darrell Riley of T Rowe Price, Craig Scholl ...
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Features
New Europe shows potential
Central and east European asset management markets are currently among the fastest growing in Europe. The markets are skewed by the compulsory private pensions system, which distinguishes the region from the ‘old’ EU, but growth is most rapid in the investment fund market, albeit from a low base. According to ...
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Features
Global players home in
There is an air of eager anticipation among global custodians when it comes to providing services in central and eastern Europe. Interest in the region has been steadily building over the past few years and the accession of countries including Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic to the EU ...
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Features
Rates on the move
After such voluble hints from European Central Bank (ECB) President Trichet himself, the first Euro-zone rate hike since October 2000 ought to have come as no surprise to the markets. Whether or not any move was necessary is less clear, however, and investors are not convinced that after this move, ...
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Features
The Euro-zone bond success
It is now over six and a half years since the introduction of the euro, and in a recent article, PIMCO’s Emanuele Ravano suggests that the Euro-zone’s bond market should be viewed as perhaps the politicians’ biggest success story. Many of the statistics speak for themselves: The euro government bond ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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. ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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% ...
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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 ...
