Latest from IPE Magazine – Page 705
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Features
Market stuck in a rut
Hopes for a significant recovery in the UK equity markets this year have all but disappeared. Investor responses to negative news in the telecommunications sector have been surprisingly bearish, say strategists. If this attitude persists, market levels are bound to stay depressed, they say. Shares of companies in old economy ...
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Features
Sobering long-term view
The ‘Golden 90s’ for equities are definitely over. In the mean time, most investors have recognised that the sooner we put the past decade behind us, the better off we will be at the end of the next decade. Equity markets across Europe have fallen sharply over the past two ...
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Features
Risk clouds equities
Asset allocation is often emphasised as the most important single decision in the investment process leading to a good result. For portfolio managers a good result, of course, is outperforming a benchmark. As soon as the macroeconomic scenario is established, factors such as expected return on the different asset classes, ...
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Features
Taking the slow road to reform
The development of the Italian pension fund industry has slowed down. Political discussions regarding the reform of the system, changes in the labour market and the never-ending negotiations about the transfer of the TFR into pensions, have increased uncertainty about the future growth of the industry. According to a recent ...
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Features
New index gives better picture of market
The Italian equity market is awaiting the arrival of a new index. The Italian stock exchange, Borsa Italiana, and global equity index provider Standard & Poor’s have established a partnership to launch a new index intended to become the benchmark for the Italian equity market. The new index, to be ...
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Features
Pensions to drive future of funds
The Italian fund management industry has been among the most attractive markets in Europe for quite some time, but this picture is changing slightly. The extraordinary growth that this industry experienced during the last decade has significantly slowed down, according to a study published by London-based FERI Fund Market Information ...
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Features
Spending the risk budget
Risk budgeting is a multi-faceted problem, and there are many kinds of interpretations. These arise from the different ways we can define risk and the ‘budget’. When we are analysing the risks within a pension fund, it is best to view the pension fund as a part of the sponsor’s ...
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Features
Need to tap into wider information
A once-in-a-lifetime change has taken place in the behaviour of share prices since late 1998. Individual share price volatility has risen to levels markedly higher than at any previous time bar a brief period in the mid-1970s. This change has had a direct impact on portfolio risk levels – nearly ...
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Features
Risk tools are to hand
With the increasing globalisation of investment, the growing complexity in instruments and the rise of alternative investment strategies, there is a greater need than ever for investors to be able to measure, monitor and control their risks. In addition to traditional measures such as tracking error and benchmarks, over the ...
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Features
Immunising the pensions at risk
In the face of market volatility and accounting standards, notably FRS17, pensions funds are showing increasing interest in ‘immunising’ their portfolios from the series of risks that they face – principally interest risk, inflation risk and market risk The most publicised example of this, so far, has been the decision ...
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Features
Judgement by your peers
Now 60% of UK pension funds have a customised benchmark, with the incidence even stronger among the larger funds. This is reminiscent of the position in the early 1970s, when funds generally had their own benchmark. Some funds were consistently outperforming their customised benchmarks but clearly underperforming their peers. When ...
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Features
'The role of annuity markets in financing retirement'
This is a welcome new study, which will appeal both to the general reader and to those seeking to understand the structure and valuation of annuities. Although based on US material and experience, it comes at a time when there is much debate in the UK and elsewhere about whether ...
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Features
Putting new building blocks in place
The pension scheme for construction industry workers in Ireland is very different to other Irish plans. Not only is it an industry-wide scheme, it is also a statutory scheme. “Apart from the national social welfare system, ours is the only statutory scheme in Ireland,” says Pat Ferguson, administrator of the ...
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Features
Fitting neatly into bond portfolios
Pfandbriefe are essentially a form of asset-backed security that is primarily issued by the German mortgage banks to refinance their loan portfolios. Making up some 20% of the total lending business in Germany, the mortgage banks have been restricted by the German Mortgage Bank Act to lending on residential and ...
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Features
Market-friendly faces needed
Hungary’s change of government following the April elections heralds more changes for the pensions industry. The centre-right Fidesz government of prime minister Victor Orban lost by a narrow majority to the Hungarian Socialist Party/Alliance of Free Democrats coalition headed by former finance minister Peter Medgyessy. Although left of centre on ...
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Features
Second pillar funds still have to overcome timing
Hungarian mandatory and voluntary pension funds have broadly similar investment limits, with two exceptions. Second pillar funds, unlike third-pillar ones, cannot invest directly into real estate (although they can do so through real estate investment units). They also have a 50% maximum limit on equity investment against 60% for third-pillar ...
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Features
Reacting to local conditions
The Northern Ireland (NI) economy is made up of small businesses – the figures from the Equality Commission that monitors employment patterns in the province for businesses over 11 employees, show that of the 3,800 businesses in the private sector, over 2,700 had less than 50 employees in 2000, and ...
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Features
Capture 'pooling' savings with captives
With an increased focus from both human resources and finance on cost-effective employee benefit programmes, we continue to seek ways to contain cost while maximising benefit attractiveness. Increasingly, companies are resorting to the next level of creativity in order to squeeze the bottom line costs, without neces-sarily taking away from ...
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Features
Keeping tabs on 100 schemes
With more than 60,000 employees worldwide, the basic retirement benefit guideline at British American Tobacco (BAT) is that each scheme should be competitive in relation to local market practice. “Our employees are literally scattered around the globe, with no real concentration in any one country. Trying to coordinate our retirement ...
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Features
Steel schemes break mould
When the employers and the trade unions in the Belgian metal industry came together in 1999 to discuss the formation of what was to become Le Fonds de Pension Metal, they were conscious they were breaking the mould. It was the first time that a sector-wide plan had been contemplated ...
