Latest from IPE Magazine – Page 659
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Features
Between a rock and a hard place
Germany is in an unenviable situation. Its people are over-reliant on a state pension system that is no longer financially viable, and the Riester reform, designed to develop a third pillar pension system, and boost the unpopular second pillar pension system, has not been as successful as expected. If the ...
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Features
Short end of curve opens up
The last month has seen an immense rally in government bonds, predominantly spurred by Alan Greenspan’s comments. His hints at concerns of deflation in the US have given the market the impression that an increase in interest rates by the Fed will be a long time coming. Economic data released ...
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Features
Dollar's fall divides market
The recent realignment of the euro with the dollar has created clearly defined winners and losers in the Eurozone equities market. The winners are companies that import their raw materials from outside the Euro-zone while the losers are companies like semiconductors that export outside the Euro-zone. Catherine Reilly, chief economist ...
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Features
Italian resurgence
Change in Italy is natural. As Dante famously wrote in the Divine Comedy: “The customs and fashions of men change like leaves on the bough, some of which go and others come.” Unless, that is, you’re talking about Italian pension reform. Few Italian governments over the years have strayed near ...
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Features
Borsa's place in the sun
When Borsa Italiana, the Italian Stock Exchange, introduced a central counterparty (CCP) for its cash markets on 23 May, it was the latest step in a re-engineering of Italy’s post-trade environment aimed at greater integration of the country’s markets with those of Europe. The ultimate aim of a series of ...
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Features
All change ahead for spread options
European companies operating share option plans for their employees are likely to see their reported earnings reduced, if draft accounting standards come in to force. In November 2002, the UK and International Accounting Standards (IAS) Boards published draft accounting rules (FRED31 and ED2) requiring share-based payments to be recognised in ...
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Features
Deepest and most liquid market
Ask any manager of US fixed income why investors need to be invested in US fixed income and they will tell you that no bond market is so large or so wide or so deep or so liquid. Worth an estimated $7trn (E6trn) it dwarfs every other market in the ...
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Features
The bond error
Only an actuary or an accountant could think that pension liabilities are at all like fixed interest bonds, not subject to the whims of price and wage inflation. Yet Germany is about to make the same mistake that the US, Britain, and Holland have already made, of thinking that bonds ...
