Latest from IPE Magazine – Page 685
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Features
Spotting the turning points
When will share prices in the US finally hit bottom? Faced with the endless questioning from investors, equity strategists have trawled through the data, and some have come up with reasons to be optimistic. “Identifying turning points is clearly very difficult,” says Sam Mercer-Nairne, US fund manager as SG Asset ...
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Features
Euro-zone could be weakest link
Historically, there has been a rather close relationship between the relative performance of US equities against bonds and the year on year change of the OECD leading indicator. This should not come as a surprise because, after all, the behaviour of investors is, to some extent, a function of their ...
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Features
Consumer 'will not crack'
Battered and bruised after almost three years of collapsing markets, equity investors have just experienced the largest quarterly decline in US, UK and European shares since 1987. Japanese stocks have also reached a new 19-year low. Consequently, bond yields have been falling sharply as investors have sought shelter. So, why ...
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Features
Blown off course
Professionals in the Spanish pensions market will remember this month as the end of a long process during which Spanish companies were forced, by law, to externalise their pension reserves by establishing a pension fund or an insurance contract. Previous deadlines regarding this outsourcing were postponed due to disagreements among ...
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Features
Outsourcing of e60bn mooted
Concerns about the medium term solvency of the Spanish social security system have been actively discussed not only in Spain but also in Brussels. At the end of last year the European Commission said that the Spanish government was not providing enough detailed information regarding the long term sustainability of ...
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Features
Portugal goes on hold
The start of the year in Portugal was marked by political uncertainties marked by the resignation of prime minister António Guterres following local election defeats. This, added to the disappointing performance in the financial markets and the unhealthy Portuguese economy, has resulted in a difficult period for the development of ...
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Features
Tasters of world fund styles
o The Merrill Lynch Global Equity Fund currently has more than half of its $302.3m in assets invested in US stocks. But because the fund takes a bottom-up approach to stock selection, says Graham Bamping, retail investment director at Merrill Lynch Investment Management, geographical distribution is not the driving force ...
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Features
Expectations management
There’s nothing wrong with pension funds per se, according to EFRP chairman Alan Pickering, rather it’s our outdated expectations of what they ought to deliver. Falling markets, increasing longevity, lower birth rates and annuity level have done no more than show the unsustainability of retirement levels. “People around the world ...
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Features
Benign Belgian flexibility
Market volatility has not precipitated any sharp changes of direction among Belgian pension funds, according to Hervé Noël the head of portfolio management at Tractebel Pension Funds in Brussels. Furthermore, the regulator, the Office de Controle des Assurances/Controledienst voor Verzekeringen (OCA/CDV) is using a light hand on the tiller. “Until ...
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Features
Nightmare on ALM street
American defined benefit (DB) pension funds may become the next nightmare for US corporations. David Blitzer, chairman of Standard & Poor’s index committee, predicts that pension contributions will replace stock options as the big corporate accounting issue next year. The almost three year severe stock market downturn has deeply damaged ...
