All articles by Martin Hurst – Page 2
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Features
A noise about silence
The much delayed reform of the pension system is finally due to be implemented at the beginning of 2008. Not a moment too soon. While the date has slipped continuously over the years the urgency for reform grows in sympathy, as the fortunes of the new generation of pension funds ...
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News
SRI community ‘falling down on communications’
SWEDEN – Communication – or the lack of it – on socially responsible investing has emerged as a key issue at a conference on SRI and corporate governance this week.
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Features
Quenching the thirst
For many years Cyprus was a rather inaccessible economy. Artificially high interest rates and restrictions on the movement of capital did not inspire much thought or creativity, to put it mildly. And as the island’s abundant sunshine contrasted starkly with its reputation for shady dealings, money laundering being the primary ...
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Features
Caution is king
BVV is Germany’s largest Pensionskasse with total assets of €16.9bn at the end of 2004, according to data from the German regulator BaFin. Total assets were nearly three times their level in 1990 and also make BVV nearly three times the size of its nearest rival; BVV’s membership stood at ...
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Special Report
Actions speak louder...
The Netherlands is a market which we generally consider to be among the most advanced in terms of institutional investing including attitudes to Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). But when VBDO, the Dutch Sustainable Investment Association, looked at the voting behaviour of major Dutch institutional investors regarding 280 shareholder proposals at ...
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News
European schemes ‘losing class action billions’
EUROPE - Europe's institutional investors are losing out on billions of euros in compensation from class action suits, according to a lawyer involved in the area.
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Special Report
Land of opportunity
“Companies addressing issues such as global demographic developments, rising consumption of raw materials and energy and the increasing environmental impact and effects of these are acquiring competitive advantage over those that were not” says Andreas Knoerzer, head of sustainable investments at Bank Sarasin. Sarasin has been involved in sustainability ...
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Features
Broadening the perspective
Quelle année? Ah yes, 2004. A particularly good year. Now, more than a year on from the requests for proposal issued by the Fonds de Réserve pour les Retraites (FRR) the impact on the market is clear. A gradual maturing of attitudes and approach received a massive boost from the ...
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News
Pension costs ‘key to world airline competition’
GLOBAL – Consulting firm Mercer has highlighted the impact of pensions costs on competitiveness in the global airline industry.
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News
France’s AFPEN working on longevity bond
FRANCE – AFPEN, the French association of pension funds and retirement regimes, is currently working on a longevity instrument based around annuity futures, IPE understands.
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Special Report
Taking things seriously
Socially responsible investment specialists EIRIS have found that 24% of companies worldwide have good or advanced systems in place to manage social, environmental and other ethical (SEE) risks. Published recently, the survey, entitled ‘SEE Risk Management: An analysis of its adoption by companies’, analysed companies in Europe, the Asia-Pacific region ...
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Features
A guarantee of limitations
Last month one of the most famous monuments in Belgium and star of the 1958 World Expo - the Atomium - re-opened after more than a year of renovation work. Newly gleaming in the crisp winter sunshine, this remarkable structure of giant interconnected mirrored spheres presents an enduring – though ...
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Special Report
Driving the outcome
As the links between intangibles – environmental policy for example – and corporate performance are strengthened so it is clear that they also are generating an increasingly large portion of corporate growth and shareholder value. This explains the increasing demand for information about these aspects of corporate activity, from the ...
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Features
Working in a data minefield
Sector funds were introduced at the beginning of 2004 following the enactment of the Vandenbroucke Law to broaden membership of second pillar schemes. While this aim is well on the way to being achieved other challenges remain. When the law became effective, some sectors already had in place a Fonds ...
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Features
Making the connection
Although British Telecom (BT), the UK’s incumbent telecoms operator, provides pension schemes in each of the 140 or so countries in which it operates, only a tiny proportion – around 0.3% – of the £34bn €49.5bn) of assets under management are accounted for by the company’s foreign subsidiaries. “The UK ...
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Features
Conflicting priorities
In Hungary, as in many countries, the task of financing the state pension system is a growing problem. As market economics took hold in Hungary at the beginning of the 1990s, the real value of pensions fell away. This in turn made it clear that additional, private, funded pension provision ...
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Features
Activity across a broad front
In two years’ time the status of Belgium’s self-employed as the poor relations of state pension provision should be a thing of the past. This is one of a number of challenging projects that have been exercising the powers that be in Belgium. The idea was that the self employed ...
