Latest from IPE Magazine – Page 580
-
Features
Custody market on the move
If the past few months are anything to go by, the French securities services market should prove to be one to watch this year. The large domestic players and overseas banks are positioning themselves to take advantage of what they regard as a market of significant potential growth. In December ...
-
Features
Tectonic shifts in benefits landscape
A recent global survey of multinationals’ management of employee benefits programmes conducted by Towers Perrin*, revealed two consistent motivations: a desire to control costs and a need to manage risk. If innate good practice was not driving companies in this direction, regulators have now wrenched the steering wheel and opened ...
-
Features
Going global top down
European pension funds looking to invest in global equities may feel that they are limited to investment managers at the micro, stock-picking level, since equity markets at the macro, country and sector level are expected to converge. Payden & Rygel is challenging this assumption with the launch of a global ...
-
Features
Infrastructure's class act
For pension funds the attraction of investing in infrastructure projects – roads bridges and airports – is that they can provide stable long-term returns and a good match for long-dated liabilities. However the drawback is that few pension funds have the expertise to assess the risk and returns of individual ...
-
Features
Why absolute returns rule
In a bear market, investment managers pursuing relative returns strategies can offer their clients both good news and bad. The bad news is that they have lost money. The good news is that they have not lost as much money as everyone else. Managers implementing absolute return strategies, however, can ...
-
Features
Looking for the sweet spot
Sometimes what appears to be a creeping change can turn out to be the forerunner of a seismic shift and that may be the case for what is happening in global bond mandates. Richard Wohanka, CEO of Fortis Investments and with a bond background himself describes the situation: “In the ...
-
Features
Risk analysis vital for success
The current level of underfunding of corporate defined benefit (DB) pension plans has raised awareness of the risks inherent in the plans – risk to plan members in the case of insolvency, risk to plan sponsors relative to the need to make large contributions, risk to governments (or their agencies) ...
-
Features
Extending the golden circle
The pension assets of US multinational Hewlett Packard (HP) – some $5.9bn (e4.6bn) in total (ex-US) at the end of last year – are treated with special care. The backdrop, as can be found elsewhere, is a policy of taking greater control from the centre. The ‘Golden Circle’, the inner ...
-
Features
Portability begins at home
The lack of pension rights portability has been a long-running problem in Europe. Any switch from one pension scheme to another in a single country is likely to result in reduced pension rights. Moving across borders creates additional problems. Transfers may be complicated or even impossible, and benefits may be ...
-
Features
BNY sets out its stall
There is nothing like starting the New Year with a statement of intent, and the Bank of New York (BNY) has certainly been fast out of the gate. It marked the arrival of 2005 with a clutch of new deals, alliances and acquisitions, including the purchase of Luxembourg retail transfer ...
