Latest from IPE Magazine – Page 568
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Features
Bullish on commodities
IPE asked three pension funds in three countries – the Netherlands, Portugal and Switzerland – the same question: ‘Do you agree with investment guru Jim Rogers that commodities are the only pure bull market in the world?’ Here are their answers: Vera Kupper Staub, CIO of Pensionskasse der Stadt ...
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Features
Risk, return and pension funds
When it comes to economic policy, there is much to criticise about the centre-left government of German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder. Despite an unemployment rate not seen since the 1930s – namely around 5m – Schröder’s government is still not doing enough to make Germany’s labour market more flexible. Schröder’s government ...
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Features
BVK spreads its wings
Germany’s biggest pension provider, the multi-employer Bayerische VersorgungsKkammer, is about to become bigger. It is to add another occupational group – the psychologists – to the 12 already covered. “This is a brand new arrangement with just 1,000 members to start with, so for reasons of economy of operations, they ...
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Features
Tide running custodians' way
Regulatory changes – so often the bane of a custody bank’s life – are proving to be a boon for foreign custodians in Germany. A raft of securities industry reforms made over the past few years are opening up what for many years has been a relatively closed market. Recent ...
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Features
Marketplace of discontents
As wary German investors emerge from the double-trauma of mistimed investments and stockmarket turmoil and decide how to move forward when their traditional haven of fixed income lies barren with yields at record lows, a well-meaning regulator is doing more harm than good. As in other walks of life, being ...
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Features
Trend to direct accounts
A clear trend emerges from the research by SüdProjekt that directly held portfolios as used in Anglo Saxon markets by investors will become more frequent in 2005 in Germany. Just over half of investors surveyed covering 45 institutions with assets over E700bn, will allocate more assets here, almost 30% significantly ...
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Features
Open market regime
A complete opening of the German market as a financial centre for hedge funds (which are now regulated by the German Investment Act (Investmentgesetz)) would not have been possible without modifying framework conditions for investments made by insurance companies, which form by far the largest group of institutional investors. Currently, ...
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Features
Private equity on the cusp
Germany’s private equity (PE) market is showing dynamic growth again. The segment has digested the ups and downs of the ‘new economy’ exaggerations in both directions. The volume of capital invested is settling back onto its long-term growth path. A total of almost E3.8bn was invested in private equity in ...
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Features
Austrian players look east
The Austrian market is both crowded and highly regulated – not encouraging signs for current or potential participants. Things are changing for the better, but is the market ready? One of the most important developments in the Austrian institutional market has been the implementation of UCITS 3 for investment funds. ...
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Special Report
Where does the buck stop?
Is there an optimal model of pension fund governance? If so, how should it be applied to Europe’s occupational pension plans? These were the key questions at a discussion on pension fund governance organised by pension fund consultants Akkermans Stroobants & Partners in Antwerp recently, attended by pension fund managers, ...
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Features
Striking the regulatory balance
Since I became president of the European Fund and Asset Management Association (EFAMA) in 2002, I have found strong agreement within the fund industry that adherence to ethical standards and sound conduct of business rules is in our own interest. Investment managers have a particular fiduciary duty to act in ...
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Features
Fund with know-how
The way corporate pension funds are managed will change with changes in the corporations that sponsor them. Few organisations demonstrate this better than DSM Pensions Services (DPS), the in-house organisation that manages the Dutch pension funds of the Dutch firm DSM, the former Dutch state mines. The company was once ...
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Features
Right at the core
The number of European pension funds employing core satellite strategies has grown steadily. Research suggests that only 5% of pension funds were using core-satellite strategies in 1995. This had risen to 15% in 2000 and is likely to have more than doubled since the. The attraction of core satellite is ...
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Features
The eternal triangle
The pension problem is simple: a question of assets, liabilities and the difference between them - an asset or liability. Risk is mostly simply and generally defined as the rate of change of an object. The rate of change of an asset’s value, its risk, we know by the term ...
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Features
A match made in heaven
Forwards, futures, swaps and options on a large variety of underlying indices have been around for more than 30 years. Despite their popularity with many investors and corporate users, most pension funds have always carefully managed to avoid the use of derivatives because they can be somewhat complicated. However, derivatives ...
