Latest from IPE Magazine – Page 548
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Features
Don't bank on it
Portugal’s pensions landscape is subject to a two-tier domination by the main banks which provide their clients with a range of financial services, including pension management. According to figures from APFIPP, the Portuguese Association of Investment Funds, Pension Funds and Asset Managers, the Pension Funds market consists of around E14.9bn. ...
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Features
Complex and difficult scene
Despite its under-developed second and third pillar pensions market, Spain is an attractive and competitive market for global custodians. With the European Commission in February urging the Spanish government to embrace pension reform “more vigorously”, there is plenty of scope for growth. Some attempts at reform have been made. The ...
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Features
New kid on the block
Build a better mousetrap, the saying goes, and the world will beat a path to your door. Build a better market index, and perhaps investors will do the same. Until recently, there has been a consensus in the investment community that the traditional broad market indices like the S&P 500 ...
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Features
Benchmarks bring business risk
Asset managers need to update their fixed income benchmarks each day to be able to judge how their portfolios are behaving in the market. They can lose serious money if the benchmark changes its exposure and their benchmark holdings are not up to date. Benchmark data comes from files supplied ...
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Features
Looking for the special effect
The development of the Euro-zone has led to the development of investment approaches that take a truly pan-European approach, ignoring country weightings in the search for the best opportunities in each sector. Small companies, however, are still more domestically focused and their behaviour tied more to the local index and ...
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Features
When markets turn from crisis
On 23 December 2001, the Argentinean government stopped servicing its debt. It was not the first time Argentina has defaulted – there have been four other occasions since the 1820s. It certainly was not the first default among emerging market sovereigns – Mexico, Pakistan, Ukraine, Ecuador, Russia and Indonesia have ...
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Features
Hedge funds under scrutiny
Until recently, hedge funds were considered as a ‘black box’ which aimed to deliver absolute returns and stipulated cash as a benchmark. Current research conducted at the London Business School’s hedge fund research centre focuses on two issues. The first pertains to the systematic risks of hedge fund strategies while ...
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Features
Maximising your potential
The balance between work and family is of crucial importance for the key challenge Europe is facing: how to enhance innovation by creating a competitive internal market with an adaptable work force while at the same time maintaining social cohesion. The reason is that human capital is the key to ...
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Features
More than just cosmetic
The main focus of those responsible for pensions of Bayer’s 93,000 employees worldwide has been the move from defined benefit (DB) to defined contribution (DC). “This year we have concluded the process with the completion of the move of our US employees to the DC system,” says Lutz Cardinal von ...
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Features
Sweden's red light zone
The Swedish financial regulator Finansinspektionen (FI) has launched a consultation on a proposal to identify possible problems at occupational pension funds and life companies using the so-called traffic-light model. Sweden plans to just use red as a signal. “Using the traffic-light model, FI will be able to identify at an ...
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Features
Where the grass is greener?
There seem to be two Irelands when it comes to pensions. The first is the dynamic financial centre that is looking to become a pensions hub for Europe once the occupational pension fund directive kicks in. The second by contrast is a country that is wrestling with its very own ...
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Features
A fork in the road
Some have argued that compulsion is the only way to close the so-called ‘savings gap’ the shortfall between the amount people will need in their retirement and the amount that the state will provide. They say the introduction of compulsory pension contributions is the only way forward, since encouragement to ...
