Latest from IPE Magazine – Page 650
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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 ...
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Features
From direction to implementation
As the EFRP approaches its 2003 annual conference delegates might expect an air of congratulation at the work achieved on the pan-European pensions directive, while wondering where the organisation’s work goes from here. The buzzword going forward though will be “implementation”. Just what will be the impact on member states ...
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Features
Keys for success in influencing Brussels
Legislation passed by the EU is not the end-result of decisions taken behind closed doors by Eurocrats or Euro-parliamentarians. The adoption process is to some extent open to the input of market players. The variety and number of interests represented on the different pieces of legislation, however, require interested stakeholders ...
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Features
Preparing for battles ahead
It may not be saying much, but custody has never been so exciting as it is in Germany at the moment. For one thing, the master KAG concept is putting global custodians on the map as nothing has before. And, of course, there is matter of State Street digesting the ...
