All articles by Martin Hurst – Page 5
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Features
Huge leap of faith needed
France’s new retirement savings scheme came under scrutiny at a conference organised by AFPEN, the French Pension Funds Association, in Paris recently. The Forum de l’Épargne Retraite saw concern that France’s two new retirement savings vehicles - one for the individual, the PERE, and one for collective company arrangements, the ...
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Special Report
It's a matter of principles
An obvious contributor to the debate on how environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues should be incorporated into investment policy is the United Nations (UN), or more precisely the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). The global factor - reach, consistency and influence - is what makes it so obvious. UNEPFI ...
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Features
Widening the net
Unpasteurised cheeses are becoming ever more popular in the UK on account of their more complex flavour – a flavour which becomes still more complex as the cheese matures. The sophistication of tastes is presenting new challenges - and thereby opportunities - to many a UK cheese manufacturer. Especially the ...
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Special Report
Versiko's 'passionate' team
Opportunities in the German SRI market vary, depending on one’s focus. Pensionkassen and other forms of retirement institution with deficits and minimum return guarantees on their minds are wary enough of equities as a whole, never mind new concepts which may appear at first sight to compromise the all important ...
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News
Mercer sees no chance for pan-European DB
EUROPE - Defined benefit pension schemes may never be achieved at a pan-European level, according to consulting firm Mercer (corrects spelling of Stainier).
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News
EU meeting set as fears grow for IORP directive
EUROPE – There is to be a meeting at the European Parliament next week amid a fear that some EU member states will not be ready for the directive on occupational pensions.
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Special Report
Hungary comes of age
As market forces took hold across the former eastern bloc following the collapse of communism, the emergence of a thin layer of very wealthy individuals was one of the most visible, and disturbing developments. How can a system of supposed equality give way to such apparent inequality? Is it the ...
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Features
How BASF has it taped
Let us rewind to the year 1888. In that year BASF was one of the first companies in Germany to set up a Pensionskasse. Fast-forward to the present: Today it caters for BASF’s German employees with a funding of around E4.5bn, and forms part of a network of schemes with ...
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Features
Oil for extra virgin wheels
Italy’s new defined contribution (DC) schemes have got off to a slow start. Having become operational only a few years ago, assets under management of the industry-specific contrattuali - literally contractual, or closed - schemes were just short of E6bn at the end of September, with just over a million ...
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Special Report
Getting to the point
Pictet has been developing tools to assess companies’ SRI credentials since 1997. The problem, it seems, is that much of the information provided by companies under examination is incomplete. “Very often a company will put together a sustainability report but it will only show what it wants to show,” says ...
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Features
Austrian players look east
The Austrian market is both crowded and highly regulated – not encouraging signs for current or potential participants. Things are changing for the better, but is the market ready? One of the most important developments in the Austrian institutional market has been the implementation of UCITS 3 for investment funds. ...
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Features
Marketplace of discontents
As wary German investors emerge from the double-trauma of mistimed investments and stockmarket turmoil and decide how to move forward when their traditional haven of fixed income lies barren with yields at record lows, a well-meaning regulator is doing more harm than good. As in other walks of life, being ...
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Special Report
Uphill in Netherlands
According to the the Dutch Association of Sustainable Investors (VBDO): “Dutch pension funds hardly give any information on how they include social and environmental aspects in their asset management.” The VBDO reported that the total volume of socially responsible investments (SRI) of Dutch pension funds had increased to about 3.3% ...
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Special Report
Directors behaving badly
PIRC, a UK-based provider of corporate governance, proxy voting and corporate social responsibility investment research has accused the UK government of complacency on the issue of directors’ pay and consultants Deloitte & Touche of being too soft in its report on the subject. PIRC published its latest set of shareholder ...
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Special Report
Mark of excellence
In January Brussels-based Independent SRI and CSR advisory and research organisation Ethibel launched its new ‘excellence’ certification in an attempt to appeal directly to institutional investors. This, coming hot on the heels of the new disclosure law on SRI for pension funds, will give a boost to Belgium’s SRI market, ...
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Features
Still waiting for the future
By far the most important development in the Belgian pensions market has been the provisions for industry-wide pension schemes set out in the Vandenbroucke Law which came into effect at the beginning of last year. The main aim of the law – to boost second-pillar pension provision by creating industry-wide ...
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Features
Lego: piecing it together
When the founder of the Lego company, Ole Kirk Christiansen, came up with the brand name, he was apparently unaware that it means ‘I put together’ in Latin. It is appropriate in this context as that is exactly what the company, based in Billund, Denmark, has been doing recently with ...
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Features
On fait des progrès
New energy, new sophistication and, not least, new money. France is gradually shedding its image as a land of relatively limited opportunity for institutional asset managers. This gathered pace last year with the issue of mandates worth E16bn by the Fonds de Réserve pour les Retraites (FRR), the first of ...
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Features
Generous to a fault
Belgium’s 150 MPs retire on one of the most generous pensions of any parliamentarians in Europe - some 75% of final salary - which compares with around two-thirds of final salary in most other cases. But in terms of the length of time it takes to accumulate a full pension, ...
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Features
Tobback: making his mark
Belgium’s new pensions and environment minister Bruno Tobback has his work cut out. The ever more important and contentious portfolio of pensions offers challenges galore. But to make his mark Tobback must, at the tender age of 35, prove himself against the backdrop of his influential predecessor Frank Vandenbroucke, architect ...
