Latest from IPE Magazine – Page 699
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Features
Key features of IORPs
The directive has espoused the prudent man principle with a few minor restrictions on cross-border funds. Member states can choose to retain quantitative rules. Some specific quantitative restrictions can be imposed by a member state not only on its domestic pensions funds but also on pension funds from another state ...
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Features
Long and rocky road
The 1997 Green paper drawn up by internal commissioner Mario Monti is often seen as seminal in getting today’s proposed directive underway. In many ways this is true but the paper, and subsequent discussion, drew heavily on the mistakes and lessons learnt from the first unsuccessful attempt. A fairer assessment ...
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Features
Weathering the storm
After a period of relative stability, analysts are reporting renewed caution and uncertainty in Europe’s markets, brought on initially by the threat of terrorist attacks and war, and now by the WorldCom affair. “Quite frankly this is another accounting scandal that we could do without,” says Catherine Reilly, an economist ...
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Features
Waiting for the break
With the holiday season almost here, there is almost tangible sense of relief in the bond market. Whilst one might expect investors and players in equities to be tired out by the vacillations and stomach turning downward lurches in stock markets, fixed income investors seem to have been equally drained ...
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Features
Rebuilding of US savings key factor
The disconnect so far this year between positively surprising global economic statistics and falling equity markets is described by many commentators as highly abnormal, with the only precedent occurring in the early 1930s. There appears to be a great reluctance to recognise the extreme abnormality of the whole post-1997 cycle. ...
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Features
Why the 'feel bad' sentiment
The current market circumstances give rise to some frustration for market commentators and participants alike. It is one of those periods during which it has become abundantly clear that the development of equity prices and interest rates is not one related to a certain set of factors but rather reflects ...
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Features
Mixed signals on the road ahead
UK pension funds “have had more thrown at them in the last 18 months than in the last 18 years!” is how one fund manager describes the turbulent UK pensions scene since the turn of the century. The lull in UK pension fund activity over the past 10 months is ...
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Features
How the old order is changing
Consider these two quotes: “After five years of underperformance the UK’s ‘big five’ fund managers are losing pension business to their specialist rivals”, and “Merrill Lynch, Schroders, and Gartmore are among a group of the world’s best-known fund managers who suffered a dramatic fall in their UK pensions business last ...
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Features
Power to the lay trustees
An extremely important development in the UK pensions industry over the past few years has been a significant change in the role of pension scheme trustees. For example, the Myners report, although highlighting the major issues around the institutional investment market, concluded that trustees are “at the heart of the ...
