Latest from IPE Magazine – Page 691
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Features
Dutch still have hands on assets
Externally managed Dutch institutional assets are still on the rise according to our latest report on the Dutch institutional investment management market-place. Total Dutch external institutional assets managed totalled E309bn at the start of this year. According to the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS), the total amount of Dutch pension ...
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Features
Reconciling different shareholders' views
There are essentially four major players in the provision of and management of pensions. An understanding of the objectives of each can be very illuminating when considering how they should and how they actually do interact with each other. This ‘Game Theory’ formulation has a clear, explicit macro objective, namely, ...
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Features
Time for new products
It is obvious by now that drastic measures are required to handle the looming pension crisis in Europe as – because of demographic developments – a smaller number of salary earners will need to pay for the state pension income of an increasing amount of pensioners. European governments and professional ...
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Features
Rumour of death exaggerated
Last July the US stock funds suffered a $52.4bn withdrawal, the second biggest cash-out as a percentage of assets and the largest ever in dollar volume. A healthy portion of mutual fund assets comes from contributions to individual retirement schemes like 401(k) plans and IRAs (Individual retirement accounts). To many ...
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Features
Japan embraces DC gratefully
Japan’s long-awaited defined contribution (DC) pension system has made steady progress this year, according to Yasuteru Aizawa, president of the International Pension & Economic Research Institute in Tokyo. More than 100 companies have moved to introduce DC pension schemes, 70 of them small companies. Aizawa hosted a recent conference attended ...
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Features
Momentum for change gathers pace
The development of defined contribution (DC) pension plans in Ireland shows many similarities with the current situation in the UK, with companies switching from defined benefit (DB) to DC plans to remove pension fund risk from their balance sheets. Certainly the pressure on companies in Ireland to close off DB ...
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Features
Ring-fencing DB schemes
One open question in the Irish defined contribution (DC) market is the impact of the Personal Saving Retirement Account (PRSA). PRSA are a contract-based DC pension product. They bear a strong similarity to the UK’s stakeholder pension in that it is to extend pensions provision to people who, so far, ...
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Features
DC benefits both sides
Banks and financial institutions have been in the vanguard of the move to DC pension plans in Ireland. AIB Group closed its DB scheme to new entrants at the end of 1997 and launched a DC scheme in 1998. The DC scheme now has almost 5,000 active members in Ireland ...
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Features
Global control is gaining ground
Multinational companies are increasingly instituting centralised governance practices in their global pension management practices, as well as seeking to exert influence on the asset allocation decisions of their various pension funds world-wide, according to the findings of a new survey by consultant Watson Wyatt. The survey, which Watson claims to ...
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Features
Adding value the active way
Singer & Friedlander is highly conscious of the fact that has a near-100 year history of operating independently as a bank, one of the few players left in the City of London who can still make such a claim. Over time, it has had to adapt to survive, sometimes quite ...
