Latest from IPE Magazine – Page 642
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Features
Take a common sense approach to cash
Let’s be honest, in a world of competing priorities cash management never seems to quite make it onto the hot ‘must do’ list but seems to hover, ghost like, just outside the activity zone. There is rarely an urgent imperative promoting it up the scale. This is a pity as ...
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Features
Putting currency in the blend
We believe a sound investment approach for enhanced cash and short duration portfolios is through diversifying portfolios across global fixed income and currency asset classes. We view cash management in terms of actively managing along a risk spectrum, defined by the duration of the portfolio and the allocation to various ...
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Features
Value-added with minimum risk
Relatively low global short-term interest rates continue to challenge investors. Rates declined precipitously in the US and throughout Europe and the UK in response to geo-political fears, tepid economic growth and concerns regarding the deteriorating credit market over the last 19 to 24 months. While rates have rebounded somewhat this ...
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Features
Time to latch on to tri-party report
A repo is an agreement between a buyer and seller of securities, whereby the seller agrees to repurchase them at an agreed price and, usually, at a pre-agreed future date. They are widely used as a money market investment vehicle and as an instrument of central bank monetary policy. Repo ...
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Features
Money market funds come in from the cold
The only sure-fire success for a fund promoter in recent times has been to offer investors some form of safe haven. Anything that has provided the promise of low volatility and a return of the invested principal has found a willing buyer. Money market funds have been one such success. ...
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Features
What happens when the money runs out?
This month’s Off the Record looks at the ticklish issue of solvency insurance for company pension plans in Europe – how to protect members of corporate pension plans when companies go bust. A number of European countries already operate solvency insurance schemes for corporate pensions. In Germany, and now in ...
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Features
Swift-footed giant takes the crown
The 2003 IPE Awards European Gold Winner for best European Pension Fund, ABP, is that rarest of beasts – a giant pension fund that is quick on its feet. As the judges for the IPE Awards commented: “Still and despite being the largest and opinion leading European/Dutch pension fund, it ...
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Features
Reforming zeal of a big-picture man
If there is such a thing as a European pensions ‘time bomb’, then Frits Bolkestein, member of the European Commission responsible for Internal Market, Taxation and Customs Union, is one of the individuals most likely to help defuse it. This year’s IPE Award for Outstanding Industry Contribution goes not just ...
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Features
Setting a standard on governance
The BT Pension Scheme (BTPS), winner of this year’s IPE Silver Award for Corporate Pension Fund of the year, is the largest defined benefit (DB) company pension scheme in the UK. The fund has an impressive 365,811 members in total, comprising 91,692 contributing members, 95,829 deferred pensioners and 178,290 pensioners. ...
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Features
Social partners take step into the future
Few European pension funds have made as much impact in a short space of time as MetallRente, the German industry-wide pension fund founded in 2001 by the labour union IG Metall and the employers’ association Gesamtmetall for employees of the metal and electrical industries. Such has been the success of ...
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Features
Focusing on customer service
The pension fund of ABP, Europe’s largest retirement plan, needs little introduction. A self-administered public pension fund for employers and employees in the government, education and defence sector, at year-end 2002 its customer base consisted of approximately 1.1m active participants, 700,000 inactive participants and 700,000 pensioners. The insured are employed ...
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Features
Sound returns and efficient admin
The Victoria-Volksbanken Pensionskassen is a multi-employer pension fund offering DB and DC pension schemes. The administered plans are funded both by employer and employee contributions. With a capital value topping E308m at the end of 2002, its major shareholders are Österreichische Volksbanken, Victoria Volksbanken Versicherungs and ERGO International für Beteiligungen. ...
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Features
Specialised IT helps meet needs of medical sector
The VKG pension fund in Belgium, established more than three decades ago, aims to create decent pensions for the country’s doctors, dentists and pharmacists. The fund is geared mainly towards independent professionals, because, it says, their first pillar state pension provision is very weak. VKG offers a service to its ...
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Features
Keeping it simple, but also flexible
Founded by the parties negotiating the collective labour agreement for Denmark’s industrial sector, notably the Confederation of Danish Indsutry (Dansk Industri) and trades union cartel, Centralorganisationen af Industriansatte (CO), the Copenhagen-based Industriens Pension is a joint stock life insurance company, with all profits going back into the company as members’ ...
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Features
Diversified strategy aims to keep returns coming in
With a capital value of some €14.5bn in 2002 but with returns in decline, Finland’s llmarinen Mutual Pensions Insurance Company (Ilmarinen) is looking to incorporate structured products, derivatives and commodities into its investment strategy as a means of helping it achieve its main objective of ensuring the best possible long-term ...
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Features
Harmonised schemes offer fresh opportunities
Flexibility and freedom of choice are the key words in the new pensions and benefits system of French oil and chemicals sector giant TotalfinaElf. Coinciding with the Loi Fabius on pensions and savings, the newly-merged group was quick to act in setting out its vision for new harmonised supplementary schemes ...
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Features
Seeking out security for employees
A very new fund, the Vodafone Pension Trust is a CTA that was only established in March 2003, sponsored by Vodafone Deutschland. Open to all 10,000 participating employees in Germany, it offers a defined benefit (DB) scheme plus an employee-financed defined contribution (DC) scheme for 1,500 active members, 800 retired ...
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Features
A way to smooth out future shock
The National Pensions Reserve Fund was set up two years ago, to meet some of Ireland’s future public pension liabilities. Pension costs – as elsewhere – are expected to rise significantly as the population ages, and assets of the fund will be drawn down by future ministers for finance starting ...
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Features
Solid investment for self-employed professionals
The national pensions and benefit fund for Italy’s self-employed architects and engineers, Inarcassa, has e2.3 billion under management. Since privatisation in 1995, it has been upgrading its systems and financial management to compete independently, without state support. Investment strategy is determined by a national delegates’ committee, consisting of some 200 ...
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Features
Committed to flexibility and customised pensions
Still the largest pension fund in the Netherlands, with over a million active members, 700,000 inactive members and 700,000 pensioners, ABP is the self-administered occupational pension scheme for the Dutch public sector. Aside from pensions, it offers disability and death benefits for survivors and dependants. ABP’s long-standing defined benefit structure ...
