Latest from IPE Magazine – Page 579
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Features
Tobback: making his mark
Belgium’s new pensions and environment minister Bruno Tobback has his work cut out. The ever more important and contentious portfolio of pensions offers challenges galore. But to make his mark Tobback must, at the tender age of 35, prove himself against the backdrop of his influential predecessor Frank Vandenbroucke, architect ...
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Features
Back on a roll
Things are coming back together again - that’s official - but not as we knew them. Ron Logue, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, has slid his legs firmly under the CEO’s desk at State Street’s new HQ building in Boston. He clearly feels at home and relishing the challenges ahead. “The 1990s ...
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Features
Moving the goal posts
Many in the European pension fund industry would consider their Icelandic colleagues to be in an enviable position. A series of agreements between trade unions and employers since the late 1960s created a structure that has nearly universal coverage, was robust enough to shrug off the financial market meltdown of ...
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Features
Generous to a fault
Belgium’s 150 MPs retire on one of the most generous pensions of any parliamentarians in Europe - some 75% of final salary - which compares with around two-thirds of final salary in most other cases. But in terms of the length of time it takes to accumulate a full pension, ...
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Features
Hedge strategies still dominant
December was globally a good month for hedge fund strategies, especially when compared to the disappointing performance in 2004 as a whole. But as shown in table 1, the performance of the different strategies was mixed in December. While the convertible arbitrage and CTA global strategies fell short of their ...
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Features
Clwyd strikes the right risk/return balance
Clwyd Pension Fund, currently valued at £611m (e884m), is one of a growing number of local government pension funds in the UK that have made substantial allocations to alternative investments. Alternatives now represent 22% of the fund’s total portfolio. Of this 4% is allocated to currency funds, 4% to private ...
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Features
Taking centre stage in Europe
With the new year, the rewriting of the rules governing the single currency takes centre stage in the pension debate, with a number of member states clamouring that they should be given more time to get their public pension systems in order. Also, the European Parliamentary Pension Forum (EPPF), initially ...
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Features
Separate alpha from beta
Many of the pension and asset management industry’s leading figures gathered at the Institutional Fund Management conference in Geneva in February to discuss key topics, including how to pursue alpha, the structure of trustee boards, and the best way to ‘work’ your assets. Mark Anson, chief investment officer for the ...
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Features
Real estate attractions explored
Delegates to the first IPE Real Estate European Investor Forum, held in Barcelona last month, gathered to hear some of the leading lights of the real estate industry talk about current issues, global real estate markets and the investment options open to pension funds. The one-day event was organised by ...
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Features
Reality of funds moves closer
Otto von Bismarck, first Chancellor of the German empire and ‘founder’ of the social security system in the second half of the 19th century, used to compare laws to sausages because for both he said: “It is better not to see them being made.” In today’s political and regulatory environment, ...
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Features
New solutions to old problems
Pension professionals have long known about the existence of the duration mismatch being run in most funded pension schemes. This problem has been ignored for various reasons, including an historic lack of hedging instruments, uncertainty in valuation of long-term liabilities and buoyant equity markets. The duration mismatch risk is simply ...
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Features
Heading for a crowded retirement
What was your first full-time job – and do you remember what you were paid at the time? My first job, in 1966, after I graduated in law from the University of Copenhagen and completed my military service was in the education ministry working on higher education planning. It was ...
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Features
It's a question of returns
There is some acceptance among pension funds in Europe that tactical asset allocation (TAA) – today’s version of it, at least – can top up their investment returns. But it is only in the Netherlands that TAA is widely used and spoken about. TAA, which can either be done by ...
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Features
Hedge funds by another name
According to Mercer’s study of UK pension fund asset allocation, tactical asset allocation (TAA) is also anticipated to become more popular, with the proportion of schemes using TAA expected to rise from 3% in 2004 to as much as 10% this year. David Tucker, of the UK arm of Australian ...
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Features
Looking at the dynamics
While the message is gradually getting through that tactical asset allocation (TAA) has evolved and improved since the early 1990s, consultants say this new investment method has yet to prove itself in the long term. Andrew Kirton, UK investment consulting practice leader at Mercer says TAA is back on the ...
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Features
A place for equities
IPE asked three pension funds in three countries – the Slovakia, Denmark and Germany – the same question: ‘Equities are still the only asset class that can provide the returns that pension funds need to reduce their deficits – or are they?’ Here are their answers Gabriel Hinzeller is ...
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Features
On fait des progrès
New energy, new sophistication and, not least, new money. France is gradually shedding its image as a land of relatively limited opportunity for institutional asset managers. This gathered pace last year with the issue of mandates worth E16bn by the Fonds de Réserve pour les Retraites (FRR), the first of ...
