Latest from IPE Magazine – Page 585
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Features
Technology's pivotal role
German pension funds face a range of challenges depending on the organisations and members they serve, and the pressures upon them to adjust to the current market environment. Technology plays a key role in enabling them to operate more efficiently, manage their investments with greater sophistication and meet members needs. ...
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Features
Trouble at the top
Last December Ireland’s asset management industry was rocked by the sixth defection from Bank of Ireland Asset Management (BIAM) to Autralian financial services group Perpetual Trustees. BIAM was still reeling from the initial shock of the first four departures in October; now concerns regarding the bank’s ability to maintain its ...
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Features
Dress rehearsal for Europe's pensions
As a centre for servicing investment funds, Ireland –or more precisely the International Financial Services Centre in Dublin – has been growing at a rapid rate. In the past year, according to London-based funds industry analyst Fitzrovia International, domiciled net assets in the Irish funds industry grew by more than ...
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Features
Irish funds venture shy
Since the go-go eighties, Ireland has been punching above its weight in cultivating a profile as a home of technological innovation. In 2003, private equity funds invested in Ireland totalled e255m. This represented 0.194% of the country’s GDP, and one of the highest percentages in Europe, higher than Germany, Belgium ...
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Features
Reserve fund takes first steps
The National Pensions Reserve Fund was set up in 2002 to act as a cushion against some of the expected growth in future liabilities of Ireland’s state and civil service pension arrangements. Its purpose is to act as a demographic equalisation fund, helping to redress potential underfunding which may arise ...
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Features
A schizophrenic market
Perhaps one of the striking aspects of investing in European equities five years after the introduction of the euro, is the continued ambiguity of what a European mandate should represent. It is rather as if when considering an American mandate, the choice included mandates for the US excluding Texas as ...
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Features
New fashion balanced
The progressive move by pension funds from balanced to specialist management has been one of the dominant trends in the asset management industry over the past 10 years. The process, which began in the US, has extended to Europe and now seems irreversible. The main reason for the move is ...
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Features
Risk budgeting takes centre stage
How does ‘new balanced’ asset management work in practice? Allianz Global Investors’ (AGI) product Global Vision provides one example. Global Vision is the brainchild of Lee Thomas, a managing director of PIMCO and the head of its international portfolio. Thomas got the idea when PIMCO, 70% owned by Allianz, absorbed ...
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Features
Europe's high yield comes of age
Last year was good for European high yield – not just in terms of investment returns, but issuance volumes last year were at record levels, passing those achieved in the now notorious Year 2000 at the height of the telecom bubble. Although the period between the spring of 2000 through ...
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Features
Working until you drop
The touchy subject of retirement age. Should people be compelled to retire at a certain age, and what age should that be? Many European states and employers impose official or mandatory retirement ages at which employees are expected to retire. However, these age limits were set at times when life ...
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Special Report
Benchmarking behaviour
Investors are crying out for a single objective way to measure and compare corporate governance practices across broad range of companies in the index, explains Stanley Dubiel senior vice president and director at Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS), which together with FTSE launched the new joint corporate governance index (CGI) series ...
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Special Report
The price of respect
If companies fail to understand how human rights issues could impact investment opportunities they and their shareholders will pay the price. This was the message that Howard Carter, chief executive of F&C gave at the recent Business and Human Rights Seminar. Recent issues around the world have posed questions for ...
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Features
From acorns to sturdy trees
The strategic development of AXA Investment Managers, the e340bn investment arm of the AXA Group, typifies the kind of move from balanced to specialist asset management that has gained momentum over the past decade. In 2003 AXA IM decided to re-focus its business on areas where it felt it had ...
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Features
The greatest of these is MBS
“US mortgage-backed securities have the highest Sharpe ratios of all US asset classes, stock or bond. Bonds in general have a higher Sharpe ratio than stocks going back ten years. But even among bonds mortgage-backed securities have had the highest Sharpe ratios.This fact surprises many people. “Conventional wisdom states that ...
