Latest from IPE Magazine – Page 626
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Features
Bewag believes in 'safety first'
The Berlin-based Bewag Pensionskasse feels that its policy of extreme prudence over the past three years has paid off. Risk is almost a dirty word, as management – and doubtless the members too – content themselves with the chosen ‘safety first policy. The fund, Bewag Pensionskasse, which was Germany’s twelfth-largest ...
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Features
Church fund guided by divine prudence
One of the main Pensionskassen in Germany is Berlin-based VERKA which was founded in 1924 by the Evangelical Church and today provides pensions for all of the country’s church employees. According to figures published by the German regulator BAFin, VERKA’s asset total of just over E1.5bn at the end of ...
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Features
Pension funds to boost markets
Ukraine, the second biggest country in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) after Russia, is the latest in implementing a World Bank-style three-pillar pensions system. A long-term strategy for pensions reform was developed back in 1998 by PADCO, a contractor for USAID; the company subsequently won USAID’s tender for a ...
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Features
Growing case for diversifying widely
Greater diversification, a broader opportunity set and on average a higher information ratio might in summary be the case for allocating to global fixed income. If equity volatility wasn’t enough of an inducement, asset/liability modelling also favours bonds over equities. With low yields, and expensive domestic long bonds, investors are ...
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Features
Liquidity and risk transfer
Is there – in reality – something that can be called a hedge fund with defining characteristics? If so do they apply to everything that are now called hedge funds? Hedge fund activities are very broad. They have characteristics that are defining such as they sell securities short as well ...
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Features
Pensions wait in West Wing
Alan Greenspan is not just the Federal Reserve chairman. He’s become a Washington wise man whose influence extends far beyond monetary policy. So it took his congressional testimony at the end of February to remind all American politicians that social security urgently needs to be fixed. Up to that point, ...
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Features
Feathering their own nests?
Germany’s 603 Abgeordneten (members of parliament or MdBs) preside over a nation dejected at the prospect of the gradual erosion of their statutory pension system. Some observers suggest that the generosity of the MdBs’ pension scheme simply adds insult to injury. Currently the monthly salary for an MdB is E7,009. ...
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Features
Beating the drum for overlay
With my recent relocation to Japan, I have been contemplating the challenges, risks, idiosyncrasies and opportunities of that greatest of financial games: ‘global asset allocation’. From the gleaming towers of Tokyo to the ‘square mile’ of London and the skyscrapers of Wall Street, one thing seems clear: after a decade ...
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Features
'Add return - reduce risk'
Increasing accounting and regulatory pressures on UK pension funds will compel them to at least consider including currency management in their investment strategy, according to James Binny, director of FX analytics and risk advisory at ABN Amro. Pressure is likely to come from the new accounting standard, FRS 17 and ...
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Features
Currency overlay
Pension funds and institutional investors have been globalising their portfolios for many years, yet a majority of these investors have typically ignored the currency risk inherent in these investments. For example, euro-based investor with US assets has seen a reduction in returns from investing in the US since 2001 (close ...
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Features
How PTPE tracks private equity
Investment companies listed on the stock market are generally regarded as high-risk, and in the stock-market crash some total failures attracted much publicity. In addition, some large companies, such as 3i, Softbank and Jafco, are well-known. But even experts in the field know little more about global connections in this ...
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Features
Shedding light on the long road ahead
Following the EU Pension Fund Directive, much of the pensions focus of last month’s Seventh Annual World Cup of Investment Management in Barcelona was on trustees and the structure of the pensions industry. At the conference Alan Pickering, chairman of the European Federation for Retirement Provision, said that the EU ...
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Features
Getting the best from actuaries
For many pension plans, the actuary is a sort of shaman, a person with supra-human abilities in foreseeing the future of assets and liabilities, and special powers to control the solvency level of the pension fund. However, the belief in actuarial shamanism has recently been fading somewhat. Many things have ...
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Features
Making global footprints
ABN AMRO prides itself of being “pretty global” on the asset management side, says global chief investment officer Andrew Fleming. “We have asset management offices in 30 locations worldwide, with money being managed in 22 of these,” he points out. “Few other asset managers are as genuinely global as we ...
