Latest from IPE Magazine – Page 648
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Features
Revised legislation aims to strengthen fund assets
In Austria, pensions have hit the headlines over the past year. The run-up to June’s passing of the pensions reform bill by the Austrian parliament was marked by national strikes and demonstrations as points of the bill were hotly opposed. In the end, concessions had to be made on key ...
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Features
Focus has been on second pillar pensions
The Brussels-based Belgian Pension Fund Association (BPFA) has found itself involved in two main areas in the past year or so: the implementation of the new law on second-pillar pensions and the investments results of Belgian funds during 2002. In addition, the BPFA has undergone some internal restructuring as a ...
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Features
Funds struggle to meet their capital requirements
Danish funds suffered more than many from the market meltdown. Much of Denmark’s pension money is based on a 4.5% minimum benefit guarantee, which was the rate for 12 years until 1994. The falls in share prices and interest rates, combined with the high guarantee, have made it difficult for ...
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Features
Employers get greater flexibility in making fund transfers
It has been a good year for Finland’s Association of Pension Foundations. In July legislation came into effect allowing employers to transfer schemes from pension companies to funds and foundations. Finland has a generous earnings-related first pillar system, partly funded but mostly PAYG. There is no ceiling on earnings and ...
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Features
Effecting domestic pension reforms takes centre stage
As with pension fund associations elsewhere across Europe, the Association Française des Regimes et Fonds de Pension (Afpen) has found itself devoting a large amount of its time to domestic pensions reform, and, to a lesser extent, the European pensions directive for occupational schemes. “These reforms are the widest-ranging set ...
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Features
Making a smooth transition to a new pension market
The Riester reforms continue to dominate the German pensions landscape and the Heidelberg-based German occupational pension fund association, Arbeitsgemeinschaft fuer Betriebliche Altersversorgung (ABA), says its main role now is to ensure a continued smooth transition to the new market, good communication and education of pension fund members and to get ...
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Features
Bringing hedge funds in from the cold
The current discussion in Germany about the deregulation of the hedge fund industry highlights an important issue faced by retail and institutional investors: how to find investments that can weather not only difficult market conditions but also offer potential for attractive future returns? The past three years have shown that ...
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Features
Austrian Spezialfonds face new challenges
Institutional investors in Austria have been enjoying the benefits of outsourcing asset management services for a number of years. The key instrument to implement a sound outsourcing strategy is the Spezialfonds (see box). Spezialfonds are launched by management companies KAGs according to the client-specific needs of a single institutional investor ...
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Features
Irrational despondency follows exuberance
Pension managers are yearning for the old days, when they only had to worry about benchmarking and tracking errors. Today there are a variety of other issues to deal with, ranging from new regulations to yawning funding deficits. Such lean times, especially when they follow the fat years that pension ...
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Features
Is there a future for equities in institutional portfolios?
Three years of bear markets have plagued investors across Europe and around the world. In some instances falling bond yields, driving up the liabilities, have compounded the problem. Notwithstanding the recent rally in global markets, many investors continue to question whether there is a future in equity investment. This article ...
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Features
The secret of 'timing' success
Market timing is certainly a perilous activity and perhaps a foolhardy one. However, varying market class weights in response to changing forecasts for asset class returns covers a wide range of strategies – from aggressive short-term tactical asset allocation programmes through to multi-year reviews of strategic policy. These are very ...
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Features
Jury is out on regulators' actions
Whether you are reading a newspaper on the London underground or in a Milan coffee shop, the headlines may be different, but the translation is the same. “Pensions in crisis”… “Pension industry time bomb”…. Equities markets have been in relative free fall since the turn of the new millennium as ...
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Features
A wonderful experience
Alan Pickering is not renowned for blowing his own trumpet. But, when it comes to the part played by the European Federation forRetirement Provision (EFRP) – which he chairs – in urging forward the various EU bodies charged with laying down a legislative framework for pan-European pensions, he is effusive ...
