All articles by Liam Kennedy – Page 2
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Opinion PiecesTime to rethink defined contribution pensions design
This year is shaping up to be the worst for investment returns since before the great financial crisis, according to IPE’s latest performance analysis of the leading European pension funds.
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Country ReportNordic region: Danish pension funds on track to fund climate commitments
Denmark’s pension industry is calling for greater clarity from government on the timing of green projects and on the roles of different stakeholders
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Asset Class ReportsAsset class report – Equities
Factor investment strategies were once the ‘new black’ - scientific, quant driven approaches that could deliver the ‘smart beta’ nirvana of lower volatility returns and optimised exposure to robust return premia from small cap, value and quality stocks. Pundits always warned adopters that not all factors would perform all of the time - and indeed they didn’t. But investors are taking a fresh look at factor strategies now the extended spell of outperformance of growth stocks has passed, and value has reasserted itself.
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Country ReportCountry Report – Pensions in the Nordic Region (December 2022)
Nordic pension funds are getting to grips with biodiversity and natural capital in their investment portfolios, seeking to measure both the impact of companies they invest in and ways they can limit adverse effects on nature. Like other investors globally, many are just at the early stages of thinking about this - how they measure biodiversity, which metrics and approaches are gaining acceptance, and how best to report to stakeholders.
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Special ReportSpecial Report – ESG
Our report looks at the ESG through the prism of private markets, with coverage of SFDR and an interview with Anner Follèr, head of sustainability at Sweden’s national private equity investor AP6
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Opinion PiecesLessons on LDI: learn from the Dutch cultural revolution
Around 20 years ago, UK occupational pension liabilities underwent a structural change. With assets weighted towards UK equities, still cashflow positive and open to new members and future accrual, liabilities were not too greatly discussed.
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Country ReportCountry Report – Pensions in Switzerland (November 2022)
Our report on Swiss pensions also looks at the growing demand for so-called 1e plans, additional pension vehicles for higher earners. The 1e sector is ripe for consolidation, like the market for multi-employer pensions (Anlagestiftungen), where the federal regulator is concerned about a build-up of complexity and supervisory risks. We also cover the annual survey of the consultancy Complemeta and assess Swiss pension funds’ asset allocation plans.
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Country ReportCountry Report – Pensions in Spain & Portugal (November 2022)
In Spain, the pension sector is giving a cautious thumbs up to workplace pension reform plans, even if they fall short of the industry’s wish list. Top of that list was mandatory auto-enrolment, which won’t now happen. But the planned national so-called Macro-fondo ‘super fund’ has met with general approval. It will be managed by the private sector but supervised by a control committee comprising government, employer and union representatives.
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Features17Capital’s Pierre-Antoine de Selancy: Navigating NAV lending
Pierre-Antoine de Selancy has just left a meeting with his company’s new majority shareholder, Oaktree, and is running a little late. His days are busy. De Selancy is founder and managing partner of 17Capital, a London-based boutique specialised in providing NAV finance to private equity managers.
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Opinion PiecesSolvency II: Rule changes can’t force risk taking
Changing the rules can often seem like a very sensible policy choice – whether a sweeping deregulatory reform or more of a technocratic adjustment to regulations.
