Latest from IPE Magazine – Page 732
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Features
Tax breaks needed to get assets moving
A year ago Spanish companies were working against the clock to meet the government’s deadline for externalising their pension reserves through a pension fund or an insurance contract before the end of the year. The industry, which has been quite since the first pension funds were created at the beginning ...
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Features
Short-lived solvency
As part of a new fiscal plan, the Spanish government has announced modifications that aim to promote the country’s underdeveloped funded pensions system. The new measures, including fiscal reductions for companies and more flexible limits to contributions for pension plans, have been welcomed in the corporate and financial communities. “The ...
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Features
Eyes fixed on reserve fund
This year has seen a slowdown in the creation of new pension funds in Portugal. The awaited reform of the social security system, the real key to the future development of the industry, has not yet materialised, and although the debate is still alive, so far no major steps have ...
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Features
Gescartera probe fuels political row
What began as an investigation into the activities of Spanish brokerage company Gescartera has developed into a political crisis for the ruling Partido Popular (PP), and a worldwide search for embezzled funds and ‘black money’ accounts Casualties already include the head off the stock market’s regulatory body and a senior ...
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Features
Pension funds hit hard by equities slump
The growth of an equity culture has been one of the success stories of continental European investment over the past 10 years, and pension funds have been an important part of this. Funds in Scandinavia, Switzerland and the Netherlands in particular have steadily increased their exposure to equities to take ...
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Special Report
Exploiting the correlation
Compelling evidence is emerging that strong financial performance and sound financial management are increasingly linked. Much has been written over the past few years about the presence or absence of a relationship between the environmental and financial performance of companies. On balance, most evidence suggests that a positive relationship does ...
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Features
Living with increased volatility
Over the past 10 years, capital markets have been subject to a series of shocks. In the foreign exchange markets, the prime examples have been the ejection of sterling from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism and the collapse of a number of the Asian currencies in 1997. In the bond ...
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Features
Post the 11th
Reports in the media suggest that the terrorist attack in the World Trade Center on September 11 have ‘changed the world forever’. For those directly involved that must tragically be true. However, in the broader sense, what has changed in the professional lives of those of us involved in the ...
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Features
No almighty black box
There are currently a number of high profile risk assessment services available to the investment management industry. Upon closer examination, few of these appear to be delivering the goods. The basic thrust of each of the services is that a statistical model of risk is calibrated by reference to historic ...
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Features
Down to earth approach
The electricity sector in Spain is among the industries that historically have always provided a benefit to complement the social security pension system for their employees, and Unión Eléctrica Fenosa is no exception. Until 1993, the company itself was responsible for looking after this complementary benefit which was provided directly ...
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Features
An emerging asset class
It’s 20 years since the UK government started issuing index linked bonds, and unlike the fixed rate bond market, the sector has until recently been largely bereft of corporate issuance. That’s changing, as low yields and strong demand from key investors encourages mainstream UK companies to borrow money in index ...
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Features
Benefits of passive TAA rebalancing
The long-term investor has to make many decisions in response to certain problems within the investment process. One of these pertains to the tactical asset allocation (TAA) decision, which is the portfolio’s current deviation from the strategic asset allocation (SAA). This article considers how decisions on deviations from SAA should ...
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Features
'Simple fundamental philoshophy'
One of the largest but most unknown firms in the investment world is BlackRock, admits its founder and chief executive Larry Fink. “This is not something we planned for, but we just do not believe in ‘self-marketing’. Our whole mandate is to achieve acceptance through performance and client service.” The ...
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Features
Battling over the benchmark
One of the most significant and explosive cases of the year got underway at London’s High Court last month. Significant, because the ramifications for the pensions industry are enormous, and explosive because neither side can afford to blink first in a case that could run for up to eight weeks. ...
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Features
Ready for European tour?
The announcement by the €552m VKG-CPM Belgian pension fund for doctors, dentists and pharmacists that it had established a new healthcare sector pension fund, ‘Amonis’, with potential membership of 250,000 employees across the country, was not only one of the most significant in the Belgian pension market in recent times, ...
