Latest from IPE Magazine – Page 692
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Features
World-wide phenomenon
The past couple of years have seen an explosion in activity in ETFs outside Europe and the US. And it shows no signs of abating, despite recent disappointing market conditions which have led some investors to turn away from indexed products. Key developing markets include Japan, Hong Kong, Australia and ...
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Features
No overnight US success story
The huge success of exchange-traded funds comes as no surprise to the people who pioneered the product. But over the nine-year history of the portfolio tool, there have been times where many doubted ETFs would ever gain more than peripheral acceptance. Paul Aaronson, now executive managing director of Standard & ...
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Features
The ETF operating environment
An Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) or ‘tracker’ as it is known in continental Europe is a single share that gives the investor the benefit of exposure to a broad benchmark, sector, country or geographic zone in a single transaction. Essentially ETFs, allow you to enjoy both the flexibility of a ...
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Features
Explosion of new products
It hasn’t been long since the first exchange-traded funds (ETFs) were launched in Europe but the growth and development that this market has experienced during the last couple of years have been quite significant. Although the ETFs concept arrived in Europe around seven years after it first appeared in the ...
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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 ...
