Latest from IPE Magazine – Page 554
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Features
The alternative alternatives
Timber It has been much ignored by institutional investors, and yet timber has offered some of the strongest returns of the last decade. The asset class produced an annual compounded return of 12.44% in the period between 1989 and 2003, according to the National Council of Real Estate Investment Fiduciaries ...
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Infrastructure’s long-term payback
Pension funds are trying to spread their investments across a much wider spectrum of asset classes than in the past. More ‘alternative’ products are being offered on the market to meet the insatiable demand from institutions. One area now attracting increasing attention in Europe is infrastructure investment. The term immediately ...
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Features
Leveraged loans: a separate and strategic asset cl
In the last 15 years, the leveraged loans market has first developed in the US and more recently in Europe thanks to the growing participation of institutional investors. Leveraged loans emerge now as a separate and strategic asset class that should be considered in the asset allocation process by any ...
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Features
Intimate world of private placements
Private placements (PPs) are private as opposed to public securities. In the case of PPs, securities are offered directly to a limited number of investors and are exempt from stock exchange listing or public registration and usually unrated. The most common form of private securities are long-term, fixed-rate debt. These ...
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Features
Seeking new sources of return
The first of its kind, the New Sources of Return Survey for 2005 undertaken by asset manager JP Morgan Asset Management, questioned 125 representatives of 120 of the largest US pension plans. Both corporate and public plans were included, as well as a few non-profit, Taft-Hartley, and other plans. Differences ...
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Features
A gamble in long term or safe bet?
Long-term bond yields are a conundrum for US pension funds. They are the culprit for many of the funds’ troubles – having increased the burden of their liabilities and decreased the cash earned on fixed income assets – and they pose a big puzzle: should DB (defined benefit) plans buy ...
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Features
Approach to IT still uneven
Performance and risk are growing concerns at Austrian pension funds and to better measure and manage these factors, the funds are implementing a range of third-party and in-house developed applications. Some funds are using spreadsheets or programming applications from scratch, while others are making use of the performance and risk ...
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Features
Land of good intentions
Iceland has a population of only 300,000 and a GDP of €7bn. However, there are around 20 pension funds worth well over a hundred million euros, with the biggest ones worth more than a billion. But private equity as a pension fund asset is still in its early stages, though ...
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Features
Patience is the watchword
The €560m Nordurlands Lifeyrissjodur is a pan-industry private pension fund for employees in Iceland’s Northern Province. Its 12,000 members include workers in the fishing and manufacturing industries, as well as the service sectors. The hybrid scheme is biased towards the defined contribution model, although it is obliged to pay a ...
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Features
Covered bonds wagon rolls on
German Pfandbriefe have never defaulted in their more than 230-year existence*, a pretty amazing feat given the turbulent times Germany and the rest of Europe experienced over that era. It has long been this ‘safety’ aspect of Pfandbriefe which has been one of the most attractive features for investors. “We ...
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Features
Europe opens up
The geographical spread of covered bonds across Europe is still widening, as more countries implement the necessary legislative frameworks permitting the issuance of covered bonds or, as in the UK or the Netherlands, products are structured to mimic the essential features of covered bonds. Within this growth are other developments. ...
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Features
Consultants have a role to play
Although many smaller pension funds do not find it necessary to take on the services of a custodian, it becomes necessary at a certain level of complexity. In the UK, at least, if a fund only invests in pooled funds, there is no need for a custodian since the pooled ...
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Features
Herculean efforts required
Greece’s highly successful Olympic Games - coming hot on the heels of its unexpected triumph in the Euro 2004 football championships - seemed to do much to lift it out of its reputation as a rather lumbering, chaotic nation best known for its Mediterranean climate, cuisine, music and dancing, and ...
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Features
Ringing tone of success
As the bulk of the Greek pension system was mired in mismanagement and overregulation, the country’s incumbent telecoms operator, OTE, has stood out as a beacon of success with a cumulative return since the OTE pension fund started investing in 2002 of 26.37% with returns of 10% in 2003, last ...
