Latest from IPE Magazine – Page 627
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Features
The Anglo-Saxon lesson
I was fascinated by reports of one of the more provocative talks given over the last few weeks was from a former chairman of the UK’s National Association of Pension Funds. Alan Pickering’s speech concerned the future of UK trustees. Given at a European Bond Conference in early April, Pickering, ...
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Features
Counting their blessings
The appetite of the Belgian dentist, Belgium’s archetypal retail investor, for capital guaranteed and minimum return products is legendary. To satisfy this investor, investment products must provide protection from downside risk. Now the country’s institutional investors are developing the same sort of appetite. Part of the reason for this is ...
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Features
Protecting portfolios from downside
Portfolio insurance enables investors to limit downside risk while allowing some participation in upside markets. There are a large number of methods of portfolio insurance. The most widely used one is the CPPI (Constant Proportion Portfolio Insurance) developed in the 1980s. The CPPI method allocates assets dynamically over time. The ...
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Features
Closed fund with open agenda
The story of the British Coal Staff Superannuation Scheme (BCSSS) is part of the story of the UK’s nationalised coal mining. The fund was created in 1947 as the industry came into public ownership to look after the staff including senior underground personnel, and became a closed fund in 1994, ...
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Features
French warm to new plans
When France underwent its major pension reforms last year, all eyes were on the big issue of public sector change - the hurdle on which French governments had stumbled badly in the past. That the government finally won its battle for actuarial equivalence between public and private sector pensions with ...
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Features
How the good times returned to Europe
Comparing performance returns between pension funds in different European countries is by no means an exact science. Indeed, comparing pension fund returns between two performance measurers in the same European country can be equally imprecise. Take Switzerland for example. Publishing its 2003 universe figures, performance measurement firm InterSec recorded that ...
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Features
It will be different this time
German investors are beginning to draw their breath again. Especially now that they think they know where the equity markets are, but the pain equities caused is not forgotten. The bolt hole of fixed income is where many investors bunkered down but this space could be growing increasingly uncomfortable on ...
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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 ...
