All articles by Maria Teresa Cometto – Page 10
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Features
Pensions in Obama’s sights
When Barack Obama is inaugurated as president in January 2009, provisions affecting the pension fund industry could well be an important part of his intended new economic stimulus. But this follows little debate about the retirement system during the campaign, except when US employee’s losses in 401(k) individual accounts were ...
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Features
Slow progress expected
A long-time insider outlines the options available to the new pensions minister to Maria Teresa Cometto
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Features
New Jersey buys financials cheaply
These days the most talked about pension fund in the US is New Jersey State’s Retirement System. With $81bn (€54.7bn) in assets, it is the ninth largest US public pension fund. It is also the instigator of a highly innovative attempt to team with other large institutional investors, including foreign ...
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Features
Default dilemmas
Now that the US Department of Labor (DoL) has defined which default investments for 401(k) participants are right, will employers’ lives be easier? Not necessarily.
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Features
Too much of a good thing?
How much information is too much? One might ask that question after reading the provisions of the 401(k) Fair Disclosure for Retirement Security Act of 2007, a new bill that is sponsored by George Miller, a Democrat congressman from California. Last month a hearing on the bill was held at ...
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Features
'Toxic waste' in pension funds
Are American pension funds affected by the sub prime mortgage crisis? And how deeply? A definite answer may come only in a few months. In the meantime there is a lot of denial together with suspicion and fear. For sure, investment banks have been offering RMBS (Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities), CDOs ...
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Features
Open funds open wider
Reform of open pension funds is liberalising the domestic market. Maria Teresa Cometto spoke with Intesa Previdenza, the largest such fund in Italy
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Features
Survival of the fittest
Maria Teresa Cometto looks at how Cometa, Italy’s largest and second oldest closed penion fund, is staving off competition from banks and insurance companies
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Features
130/30 strategies: the US perspective
Globally more than $50bn (€37.3bn) may be now invested in 130/30 strategies with several different managers, according to a recent Merrill Lynch report. Those managers include Barclays Global Investors, Goldman Sachs AM, ING IM and UBS Global AM, according to Merrill Lynch’. “It’s not a fad, this is real and ...