Latest from IPE Magazine – Page 563
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Special Report
Versiko's 'passionate' team
Opportunities in the German SRI market vary, depending on one’s focus. Pensionkassen and other forms of retirement institution with deficits and minimum return guarantees on their minds are wary enough of equities as a whole, never mind new concepts which may appear at first sight to compromise the all important ...
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Features
Widening the net
Unpasteurised cheeses are becoming ever more popular in the UK on account of their more complex flavour – a flavour which becomes still more complex as the cheese matures. The sophistication of tastes is presenting new challenges - and thereby opportunities - to many a UK cheese manufacturer. Especially the ...
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Features
Pooling is now on the agenda
The UK custody and securities services market continues to be one of the most competitive in Europe and can still attract new players. BNP Paribas Securities Services and KAS Bank are the latest European players to take on the dominance of the big US banks. These relative newcomers are not ...
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Special Report
Mid-summer madness
There seem to be signs of it all over the place, the only question is where to start. Okay I could start with the usual concerns - Why are long term bond interest rates so low? How low a real yield will investors in index linked bonds accept? Why have ...
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Features
Rocking the pillars
The World Bank has signalled a shift in its position on the pension issue. With the publication in February of ‘Old age income support in the 21st Century’, an international prospective on pension systems and reform it indicated that it had taken on board some of the criticisms that have ...
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Features
Law change backs pension funds
Austrian pension funds and private equity are not an obvious fit. For a start - in terms of private equity investing as a whole - Austria comes near the bottom of the European league. Just 0.051% of Austrian gross domestic product was invested in private equity in 2003, the latest ...
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Features
Investment boost to innovation
APK Pensionskasse is a multi-employer pension fund with around 65,000 members. It manages 20 plans, the plan sponsors typically being industrial corporations. APK runs e1.8bn of plan assets, with about 1% of the portfolio invested in private equity. The pension fund has been investing in the asset class since 2001. ...
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Features
Traditional markets bullish
As can be seen from table 1, all hedge fund strategies except for convertible arbitrage posted positive performance in May. Consequently, three out of five strategies now show positive year-to-date returns, as opposed to two in April. Most traditional markets (for example , stocks, bonds, commodities) were bullish in May, ...
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Features
Huge leap of faith needed
France’s new retirement savings scheme came under scrutiny at a conference organised by AFPEN, the French Pension Funds Association, in Paris recently. The Forum de l’Épargne Retraite saw concern that France’s two new retirement savings vehicles - one for the individual, the PERE, and one for collective company arrangements, the ...
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Features
Totting up the fees
Is a multi-manager arrangement good value when compared with more traditional forms of institutional management?
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Features
Still scratching heads
Currently, there is some concern that member states will not meet the September deadline for implementing the IORP directives. However Ivo van Es, the European Commission official in charge of the implementation of the directive, has said that the EC expects all 26 member states to fulfil their obligations. So ...
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Features
PBGC reaches defining moment
More urgent than fixing social security, is preventing the bankruptcy of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp (PBGC). The US Congress thinks so and is willing to discuss new legislation - the pension protection act (PPA) - to avoid a public bailout of private pension funds that could dwarf the $200bn ...
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Features
Guarantees - whose business?
IPE asked three pension funds in three countries – in Denmark, Belgium and Germany – the same question: ‘Should pension funds offer a minimum guarantee?’ Here are their answers: Hervé Noël, director of the pension funds of Suez-Tractebel in Belgium which has AUM of e1.33bn “We have had a ...
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Features
Fighting the good fight
“Whatever happens we must not lose,” this may seem a battle cry from a general rallying his men in an historical battle. Instead it was uttered in the less eventful occasion of an interview, and it applies to the Italian pension scenario – perhaps not a far cry from a ...
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Features
Rising to the challenge
With a relatively young population, higher retirement age and regulations that offer little incentive for early retirement, Iceland faces fewer problems due to ageing than most European countries. However, local pension funds still face many challenges. There is a rising number of disability claims, fund managers must meet targets in ...
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Features
Managing your custodian
IPE has teamed up with Amaces, a UK-based provider of analytical and benchmarking services to pension funds and fund managers, to give readers an insight to performance standards within the securities services industry On a quarterly basis, Amaces will provide IPE with a table of live data drawn from its ...
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Features
Shape of things to come
There is no smoke without fire, runs the old saw, and sure enough the long predicted – if oft denied – merger between the Royal Bank of Canada’s Global Services securities services operation and Luxembourg-based Dexia BIL has finally come to pass. First rumoured back in early 2003, the deal ...
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Features
Too much information
There is no doubt that running a global equity portfolio is a macho activity that any red-blooded CIO would like to put their name to. It is also a good fallback in the event that a merger takes place and the loser in the battle for CIO has to be ...
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Features
Going for the middle ground
For years, a typical allocation of 70% equities and 30% fixed income delivered double-digit equity returns. However, the fall in equity returns seen over the last five years has pushed many pension funds into deficit. Pension funds can continue allocating 70% to equities and hope that they recover sufficiently to ...
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Features
Tougher times in giving market
UK charities have enjoyed bumper returns on their investments over the past year. The average charity fund achieved a total return of 13%, according to preliminary results for the latest Charity Fund survey from WM Performance Services. However, the gains are largely caused by the strong market rally in the ...
