Latest from IPE Magazine – Page 647
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Features
Private pensions' two-pronged approach
After lagging behind its neighbours in private pensions and investment funds provisions, Lithuania has passed a comprehensive set of financial laws allowing for second-pillar pensions and clearing the way for third-pillar pensions and investment funds to operate on a level footing with life insurance. The significant legal changes took place ...
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Features
Latvia and Estonia streak ahead
Lithuania’s private pensions system differs in some technical respects from its Latvian and Estonian counterparts, including the completely voluntary nature of the second pillar and its use of a system of individualised accounts. Its compatriots are nevertheless some years ahead in establishing private provision. Latvia has had third-pillar funds in ...
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Features
Meeting the hedge capacity challenge
What is very interesting is the recent rise in pension fund investment in hedge funds. Driven by increasing membership and sponsor pressure to generate absolute returns, pension fund trustees are increasingly considering hedge funds as part of their overall investment portfolios. Now that consultants and even the UK government (Myners) ...
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Features
For a small fee...
Convention has it that the long-term benchmark is the ‘strategy’, and the shorter-term deviations are the ‘tactics’. More important than the label is by whom and how these long-term decisions are made. There was a time when the trustee decision was to follow the herd, and the herd moved at ...
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Features
Fixing pension deficits
Is the worst over? The sky over American pension funds looks a bit less cloudy, after some good news arrived both from Wall Street and from the bond market. Analysts at Merrill Lynch even calculate that the huge deficit hanging over DB pension plans – as big as $300bn (e266bn) ...
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Features
Looking at the pros and cons
The brutal and tragic murder of Swedish foreign minister Anna Lindh permeated every aspect of the closing stages of the vote on the issue of the country joining the Euro-zone. Democracy may have been vitiated by the vote, but whether its result will be accepted as conclusive remains to be ...
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Features
Mid-Atlantic mindset
With the UK’s benchmark index, the FTSE 100, hitting highs not seen for a year what about the company behind the index, London-based FTSE Group? The company was formed in 1995 and is a joint venture between the Financial Times and the London Stock Exchange. The company’s chief executive is ...
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Features
Bridging the gulf
Set to kick off this year on 20 October in Singapore, the occasion of SWIFT’s annual Sibos conference and exhibit is always an apposite moment to reflect upon the Belgium-based cooperative’s progress over the preceding year. This year, however, SWIFT ceo Lenny Schrank and his fellow executives could be forgiven ...
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Features
Sticking to your last
David Testa sits square in his chair as chief investment officer at T Rowe Price in Baltimore. His chair may swivel, Testa doesn’t. He’s seen most of it before and he ain’t for turning. That’s not surprising since he has been with the firm since he was hired as an ...
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Features
Time to shut the back office
This article considers issues involved in outsourcing each of the main areas of a pension scheme, and in particular back office outsourcing. It is based on an operation I successfully carried out at the £3bn (e4.3bn) TRW/Lucas fund in the UK. This was probably the first case of an in-house ...
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Features
Cracking the German market first
As the European pension market evolves, with new regulations creating greater diversity in the types of pensions available to workers, pension providers are faced with the issue of how to administer the different products they are now able to offer. Nowhere is this problem more marked than in Germany where ...
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Features
External managers still make sense
All over Europe, pension funds are handing over the running of their assets to third-party managers. Outsourcing has become a buzz word as regulatory reform, a clampdown on costs and risk, and a greater awareness of best market practice lead pension funds into new asset classes with new managers and ...
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Features
Switch to DC poses real problems
The UK has a long history of defined benefit (DB) pensions, but in recent years many employers have switched to defined contribution (DC) schemes, particularly for new members. As the requirements are different for each of these arrangements, changing from DB to DC presents companies with administration and governance challenges. ...
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Features
Questions of perspective
This month’s Off The Record considers two topics instead of the usual one. The first topic is the intention of some European governments to raise the statutory retirement age. In Germany the Rürup Commission has recommended raising the retirement age from 65 to 67, and there are similar proposals in ...
