Liam Kennedy
Liam is IPE’s editorial director and a board director of IPE International Publishers Ltd.
He has over 20 years’ experience as a financial journalist and editor, specialising in the field of institutional investment and pension funds. He is also a regular speaker/moderator at industry events around the world.
Prior to joining IPE in 2007, Liam spent nearly seven years at the Financial Times group in London, where he worked as a specialist editor and writer and launched a number of European pension and investment titles.
Contact info
- Tel:
- +44 (0)20 3465 9300
- Email:
- liam.kennedy@ipe.com
Opinion PiecesEurope escaped the Great Retirement Boom but watch out for the crunch
Continental Europe appears to have largely escaped the trend known in the US as the ‘Great Retirement Boom’, where an economically comfortable cohort of 50 to 64-year-olds has retreated from work in the post-COVID period.
Special ReportTop 1000 Pension Funds 2023: Europe’s pensions absorb a €646bn loss
Last year saw a net reduction in the asset stock of European pension investment retirement pools of 6.77% over the previous year, according to IPE’s annual study of the leading 1,000 pension funds across the continent, marking a sea change for pensions.
Opinion PiecesCapital competition: where does it leave sustainability goals?
For pension funds and other similar large institutional pools of capital, there is significant pressure from politicians to invest in politically favoured domestic sectors – like renewables or high-growth sectors like venture capital.
Special ReportIPE Top 500 Asset Managers 2023: Asset management at a pivotal point
Data highlights from IPE Top 500 Asset Managers 2023 2022 global asset management AUM is €102.6trn 5.5% reduction on the 2022 total of €108.6trn Global institutional AUM: €35.1trn European institutional assets: €11.5trn Click for the Global Top 500 and European Top 120 institutional asset manager rankings
Opinion PiecesBetter the equity market devil you know?
Being a large equity investor in a relatively small domestic market can have advantages as well as drawbacks. Proximity to the market and its infrastructure, good knowledge of corporates and corporate leaders, and the ability to exercise strong influence as an owner, potentially a stable long-term one, all count among the advantages. The need to avoid concentration – in terms of position, sizing and overall allocations – and idiosyncratic sector exposure are among the challenges.
InterviewsVontobel: Builders in a changing landscape
Christel Rendu de Lint, a veteran of Swiss asset and wealth management, sees herself as a builder. This claim has justification given her track record at UBP, where she built a fixed-income capability from scratch to CHF20bn (€20.5bn) over 12 years.
NewsNew PPF proposals would represent ‘seismic changes’ to UK pensions landscape
Plans would mean ‘struggling’ DB schemes could choose to opt-in to the Pension Protection Fund
Opinion PiecesLDI lessons: be wary of future traps
After the global financial crisis of 2008-09, world leaders meeting at the Pittsburgh G20 summit mandated central clearing for derivatives. This was to allow for greater supervisory oversight and to mitigate against the unintended build-up of risks of the kind that almost toppled the financial system in the guise of over-the-counter credit default swaps.
Opinion PiecesBanking crisis delivers a lesson on equity strategy
We may never know the precise reasons why the in-house equity team of Alecta, the €105bn Swedish pension scheme, chose to invest in excess of €1bn in risky US banks including Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), much of which has now been written off.
Opinion PiecesMight Ukraine’s distressed assets one day look attractive to pension funds?
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 has tested Europe’s political and economic resolve. But where Vladimir Putin attempted to sow discord, he instead has failed to divide the West.
Country ReportCountry Report – Pensions in Germany (March 2023)
Angela Merkel’s governments largely dodged the political hot potato of first-pillar pension reform, which means the current overhaul to the state system is overdue. But it barely gets to grips with the issues. For one, it does not deal with entitlements or increase the retirement age; second it introduces a funded component that will probably only take effect in the 2030s, when the post-war demographic peak is passing.
Special ReportSpecial Report – Natural capital
Incorporating nature risk into financial analysis remains the - for now elusive - goal for investors, but this is hard given the lack of consensus on what information should be collected and how it should be presented. Such questions are the domain of the Taskforce for Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD), the group founded in 2021. As well as striving for transparency and consistency in data disclosure, asset owners are also keen to deter inflated and exaggerated claims by asset managers on biodiversity impacts.
Opinion PiecesGermany's first-pillar pension reform plans: tough to meet expectations
How would you design your asset allocation if you were building a portfolio from scratch? This is the question facing the governors of Germany’s new state pension buffer fund, the grandly titled ‘Generationenkapital’ (Generational Capital) fund. The expectations are high.
Country ReportCountry Report – Ireland (February 2023)
Ireland is preparing an Auto Enrolment Bill, which will kick-start the process of defined contribution pension reform in earnest, some 15 years after the concept was first mooted. The plan is for a Central Processing Authority to administer the system and for up to four providers to tender for a chance to manage member contributions.
NewsSmart beta pioneer reignites debate on factor timing
Research Affiliates founder Rob Arnott finds ‘most factors look very cheap’ in a new paper highlighting the attractiveness of many equity factor strategies
Opinion PiecesPeople power: a hidden strength of public pension funds
Public and sovereign pension funds face a unique set of challenges, sometimes related to resource constraints and often to the glare of open scrutiny.
InterviewsNewton’s Euan Munro: Seeking the best of both worlds
Euan Munro has built a formidable reputation in asset management, developing a major multi-asset absolute return strategy at Standard Life Asset Management in the 2000s. But the fortunes of his once mighty Global Absolute Return Strategy (GARS), now managed by Abrdn, have wavered as multi-asset strategies have fallen out of favour.
Country ReportCountry Report – Pensions in Central & Eastern Europe (January 2023)
Poland’s PPK auto-enrolment system marks its fourth anniversary this month. It can hardly be described as a complete success given the participation rate is stuck at just over a third of the working population. Some initial projections foresaw a 70% takeup level. But with assets approaching €2.5bn and rapidly growing, there is a sense that this is a relatively good outcome for a country with no tradition of independent retirement saving and where the previous second pillar system was radically overhauled just a few years ago, leaving ordinary citizens confused and mistrustful.
Special ReportSpecial Report – DC pensions
Workplace pensions can differentiate themselves by their stewardship and engagement programmes. But effective stewardship is generally the preserve of larger defined benefit players and big investment managers. Now, technology means investors in smaller pooled funds can express their proxy voting preferences, shifting the power away from the managers and towards asset owners.
Asset Class ReportsAsset class report – Fixed income
Last year was the worst in recent decades for both government bonds and credit, with portfolio returns worse than most professionals have experienced in their careers. But is the tide finally shifting as inflation starts to moderate and terminal policy rates are in sight? In any case, geopolitical risks and inflation are not set to go away, and recession will inevitably take a toll on corporate issuers.
