Latest from IPE Magazine – Page 660
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Features
Three pillar foundation
Life insurers and banks offering mutual funds stand to gain most from any expansion of Greece’s funded occupational pension plans. The Greek life market is dominated by a handful of insurers. In 2001 the top four had 66% of the market, split between Interamerican (now part of the Netherlands-based consortium ...
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Features
Strengthening the second pillar
Slovakia is set to overhaul its entire pensions system, introducing a second-pillar privately funded plan alongside changes to its existing first and third pillar systems. The new proposal is a more radical version of the previous government’s attempts at pensions reforms, which in any case fell by the wayside after ...
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Features
Wall Street fall out
American pension funds will not get a penny of the $399m accused restitution fund paid by 10 of the biggest Wall Street firms found ‘guilty’ of conflicts of interest. In fact the settlement between them and the US government, following New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer’s investigation, should benefit ...
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Book Review
Book review: 'European Pensions & Global Finance'
Gordon Clark’s book, European Pensions and Global Finance, provides a refreshing addition to the burgeoning literature on social security and old age retirement security. Rather than offer another solution to the pending crisis, he reviews the political economy and economic geography to examine the role and status of European pension ...
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Features
Going out on a ratings limb
Across the globe, CEOs and CFOs have been ‘feeling the heat’ for some time. The corporate and personal implications and repercussions of the prolonged slowing of the world economy, the Enron scandal and other stories, the Sarbanes Oxley Act and the sustained decline in equity prices over the past three ...
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Features
TNO sticks to its guns
There are not many pension plans in the Netherlands that represent workers across such an eclectic diversity of private/government entities ranging from the qualitative labelling of fruit and vegetables through to the technicians in vehicle crash-test dummy laboratories. This is because the TNO organisation is founded by law in The ...
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Features
Luxembourg beats the trend
In 2002, Luxembourg Spezialfonds defied the generally negative volume growth in both the Luxembourg and other European investment fund markets. Fund volumes increased, contrary to expectations, by 5.5%, compared to an increase of 6.1% the previous year. Volumes in Luxembourg funds open to the general public (public funds), however, were ...
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Features
Building a pension factory
It was more than two years ago that HypoVereinsbank, the second largest German retail bank, decided to strengthen its position in the pensions area. This was a brave move at the time, as for decades pensions had been a stronghold of the insurance industry, protected by tax regulations that provided ...
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Features
Cut through to essentials
After three years in a bear market that has seen asset managers operating in Europe bringing out the magnifying glasses to scrutinise the bottom line of a business formerly held up as the great profit driver, you could expect things to be different for those responsible with plotting the way ...
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Features
Getting the admin sorted
The slow pace of development of defined contribution (DC) pension plans across Europe – whether at the national or pan-European level – has frustrated the growth plans of the investment management industry. While many of the political and social factors impeding DC plans are outside the direct control of the ...
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Features
Putting custodians to the test
Clients actively involved with their custodians know their provider does not just offer custody and settlement services. All custodians these days are leveraging the existing relationships they have with their custody clients. They are keen to add to the list of ‘value added services’ used by their clients. Many believe ...
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Features
Europe's end-game comes closer
Along with the untimely, if unlamented, demise of the global Straight Through Processing Association, the acquisition by State Street of Deutsche Bank Global Securities Services was undoubtedly one of the more notable developments in the industry during 2002. The transaction put State Street at the very top of the custody ...
