Latest from IPE Magazine – Page 671
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Features
Market deep in change
The current downturn in markets has presented Irish pension funds with what Nora Finn, chief executive of the Irish Association of Pension Funds (IAPF) calls the new ‘realism’. Parodying the new ‘investment paradigm’ phrase that was banded about liberally just a few years ago, Finn says the new realism means ...
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Features
Pension booster
The PRSA (Personal Retirement Savings Account) is a new portable pension fund, akin to the UK stakeholder plan, through which the Irish government is seeking to boost pension provision amongst the Irish population from the current levels of around 50% up to 70%. Both employers and employees can contribute to ...
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Features
No hiding place
Often within the investment management business, investors are confused by the products on offer, there by building an unnecessary and unhealthy distrust. But comparing apples with oranges is a large part of the problem. This problem refers to situations where trustees and those in the investment consultancy community compare performance ...
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Features
Croatia's model system
After a year of operations, Croatia’s compulsory pension system has been judged a success. As of the end of 2002 the seven compulsory pension funds accumulated 938,310 members and net assets of HRK2.04bn (E285m). More than that, virtually all contributions are in the correct place and most of the future ...
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Features
Legal changes ahead
The compulsory pensions system, which started collections at the beginning of 2002, is open to workers up to 50 years and compulsory for those aged 40 and under. It is funded by 19.5% contribution of gross wages, of which a 5% portion is diverted into the compulsory second-pillar. There are ...
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Special Report
Up to trustees to make system work
Pension funds, as quintessential long term investors, can be a world force for corporate governance reform. This is the long-held creed of Robert Monks, one of the founding fathers of corporate activism in the US and the UK. For two decades, Monks has argued that investors should take a more ...
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Features
Market with split personality
Investors in European equities enter this year with an even greater degree of uncertainty and foreboding than the last. Enormous risks overhang the market, not least the fear of war with Iraq, but also concerns over a double-dip recession and the need for structural reform in heavyweight markets like Germany. ...
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Features
As rare as black tulips
Pure-bred defined contribution (DC) corporate pension schemes managed by pension funds remain as rare as black tulips in the Netherlands. Most DC schemes have been grafted on to defined benefit (DB) schemes to create a Dutch speciality – DC hybrids. For cultural and historical reasons DB schemes have flourished as ...
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Features
Building up extra pension
The big Dutch pension schemes have come under increasing member and political pressure to offer more individually tailored pension plans offering greater choice and flexibility than the uniform approach demanded by the defined benefit structures. One response was to set up an insurance subsidiary to be able to provide individual ...
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Features
Getronics aims for DB style outcome
Getronics, an international IT company with its headquarters in Amsterdam, is one of a only a handful of companies in the Netherlands that has moved wholly from a defined benefit (DB) to a defined contribution (DC) system for its corporate pension plan. A new economy business with a young, well ...
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Features
Banking on the assets
Leif Hasager is an academic who has found his part time involvement with running the investments of one of Denmark’s oldest pension funds has become a full time occupation. “Now I handle everything in connection with the investment portfolio of Bank Pension, but any decision is taken by the fund’s ...
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Features
Modified cash balance
B y mid-March 2003 a huge battle can burst out in the American workplace, involving up to 42m employees, who are still enrolled in traditional defined benefit (DB) pension plans. At stake is the conversion of these plans into the so-called ‘cash balance’ retirement schemes, which was halted in September ...
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Features
The Neyt legacy
The only guide to managing our pension fund assets are our liabilities – these are the raison d’être of pension funds. Never think asset only. You must not manage a pension fund like an investment fund. Your asset allocation is based on your liability characteristics. So if they are index-linked ...
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Features
Hedge fund seeding
Growth in the hedge fund world is unprecedented and the future remains promising. After a decade of growth averaging 20% a year, analysts now predict that the annual growth rate for the next 10 years could exceed 25%. According to a recent study by Oliver, Wyman & Co and UBS ...
