Latest from IPE Magazine – Page 569
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Features
Looking after your family's financial health
The past five years have proved to be a bit of a learning curve for investors, who have been confronted with the true nature of the risk involved in investment management. High-net-worth families have been no exception and the process of wealth management has evolved on several fronts. Alex Scott, ...
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Features
All-embracing reforms
Following the launch of his green paper on ageing, commissioner Spidla told reporters on 18 March that Europe’s falling birth rate and longer life expectancy is not just about older working populations and pension reform, but affects “almost every aspect of our lives”. Pension reform is not explicitly dealt with ...
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Features
Lessons for Europe
In 1981 Chile adopted a new pension system that has set a controversial pattern around the world. Unlike traditional systems, benefits are financed by investment accounts owned by workers. Chileans are sensitive about the starting point of their system, under Pinochet. But they do not worry about whether their system ...
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Features
ABS market forges ahead
Europe’s asset backed market enjoyed pretty good health in 2004 – fewer downgrades than upgrades, hardly any defaults, and narrowed spreads. And, says Denis Badalucco, manager of HSBC Asset Management’s Asset Backed Securities (ABS) funds, liquidity also improved over the course of the year. “For our money market asset backed ...
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Features
Freeing up managers
Pension funds are increasingly considering investing in currency hedge funds instead of using a currency overlay programme. Emmanuel Acar, head of London Risk Management Advisory at Bank of America, says this is one of the trends emerging in the currency management sphere. “Pension funds are now considering allocating to currency ...
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Features
Diversification key strategy
Starting anything with a clean slate has an obvious appeal. On this principle, many pension funds choose to do away with the risk of currency fluctuations within their overall portfolio before attempting, separately, to add value through active currency management. Dutch pension fund PGGM says that from an asset liability ...
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Features
Europe following US example
There has been huge growth in the demand for currency management over the last two years, managers report. Institutional investors are seeking both to reduce the risk of foreign exchange fluctuations while at the same time making the most of the opportunities for profit. Currency can be managed through a ...
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Features
Bandwagon begins to roll
Pension funds in Europe have been stepping up their use of external currency managers. Bill Muysken, global head of research at Mercer Investment Consulting in London, says there has been a rise in the number of pension funds seeking external currency managers. During 2004, he says, 28 of Mercer’s clients ...
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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 ...
