Latest from IPE Magazine – Page 570
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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 ...
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Features
Caught on camera
Delegates to the National Association of Pension Funds’ annual investment conference in Edinburgh in March may have noticed the TV screens dotted around the venue showing interviews with pension personalities. Leading UK pension industry figures such as Railpen’s Chris Hitchen and incoming NAPF chairman Robin Ellison were giving their views ...
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Features
Waiting to take over
Finland’s biggest pension funds are using modern and sophisticated systems for tasks such as handling new complex investment instruments, risk analysis and the straight through processing of trades. The integration of systems for efficient cost-effective operations appears to be a common goal. However, there are some funds that take a ...
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Features
Between a rock and a hard place
In ancient Greece, people who wanted to have their future forecast travelled to Apollo’s temple in Delphi, where the dangerous journey was generally rewarded with an answer, albeit ambiguous. Nobody questioned the answers, because they were supposed to come from Apollo himself. But pilgrims who tenaciously interpreted the god’s messages ...
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Features
Search for consensus
Norway’s parliament hopes to reach a consensus on the main principles of a reform of the pension system by 19 May. The discussions follow the release of a government white paper in December which was based on the findings of a commission chaired by former finance minister Sigbjørn Johnsen that ...
