Latest from IPE Magazine – Page 701
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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 ...
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Features
Scottish managers shift focus
Scottish asset managers have always had to look beyond their own national market for their business. South of the border has historically been the major market for the managers from Edinburgh and Glasgow, but some have fished successfully further afield, particularly in North America. Now with the European markets opening ...
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Features
Restating doctrine of matching
Last year the £2.3bn (e3.5bn) Boots pension fund rocked the UK pensions world by putting “every last penny” into a long bond portfolio, as John Ralfe, head of corporate finance at the high street chemist chain and the man responsible for much of the thinking behind the strategy, puts it. ...
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Features
Make room for gold
It never rains, but it pours. Which, for most of us, is precisely the moment that we remember – with a certain degree of bitterness – how we so nearly picked up our umbrella before rushing out of the door. And so it is with gold. For two decades, the ...
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Features
All embracing approach to protection
PRO BTP is an organisation created by the French construction industry for the French construction industry. Its job is to run the complementary system of social protection, insurance and pensions for more than three million people who belong to the BTP – ‘batiments et travaux publics’. The organisation was set ...
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Features
Filling in the gap
The growth of third pillar defined contribution schemes in France has been hampered, historically, by the generosity of the country’s first and second pillar pension systems. The combination of a high level of social security pension and the complementary ‘repartition’ (pay-as-you-go) schemes of ARRCO and AGIRC – mandatory for all ...
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Features
Drive to improve benefits
PSA Peugeot Citröen, France’s leading car manufacturer, is introducing an Article 83 defined contribution pension plan this month in a move designed to raise the retirement benefits of its employees. The plan will cover all employees of the PSA group’s French automobile, logistics and transportation businesses whose earnings are above ...
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Features
Waiting for better plans to emerge
The current move by some of the largest French companies to introduce Article 83 defined contribution plans for their employees suggests that they are not prepared to wait for a new pensions law and the products it will bring. PSA Peugeot Citröen is only the latest of a number of ...
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Features
Russian pension reform goes on
As the main achievement, the new three-pillar system incorporating the mandatory funded pillar was launched in 1 January 2002. Now 2% out of 28% of pension contributions calculated from the payroll are used for investment purposes. In 2002, all contributions to the funded system go to the public Pension Fund ...
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Features
Skandia launches global giant
Skandia, Scandinavia’s largest insurance company, has just launched a global mutual fund company, Skandia Global Funds (SGF). SGF hopes to leverage off Skandia’s worldwide businesses to offer a fund family comprising of 20 sub funds, with the intention of increasing up to 30 by the end of the year. SGF ...
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Features
Siemens targets Mittelstand plans
With 450,000 employees, Siemens is Europe’s largest employer and ranks among the biggest globally. While the group’s pensions liabilities at E19bn may not be the same as some of the giant US corporations, Siemens has been making determined efforts to put in place a structure that would not just manage ...
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Features
All on the same spreadsheet
Siemens group office head office in Munich is gearing up for the end of the group’s financial year at the end of September, when the uniform asset management reporting system will come into place. All the group’s pension plans will be reporting their performance data according to a group-wide platform. ...
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Features
Hybrids offer extra dimension
Slumping investment returns in the major stock markets, an increase in longevity and the introduction of new accounting standards, among other factors, have left many pension funds in deficit. Conversely, the downturn in the global economy has forced organisations to be more cost-aware. As a result, many companies are currently ...
