All IPE articles in May 2005 (Magazine) – Page 2
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Features
Multinationals try to hold the line
Multinational companies based in the Netherlands are re-evaluating how much control they need to impose on their different pension plans around the world in light of ballooning costs and liabilities. But despite this increasingly close attention to their international liabilities and scheme designs – and the impact this is having ...
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Features
A match made in heaven
Forwards, futures, swaps and options on a large variety of underlying indices have been around for more than 30 years. Despite their popularity with many investors and corporate users, most pension funds have always carefully managed to avoid the use of derivatives because they can be somewhat complicated. However, derivatives ...
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Features
Hats off time
While a number of commentators, myself included, have been rather unkind to the European Securities Forum (ESF) over the past few years, the organisation has brushed aside its critics and soldiered doggedly on with efforts to bring about the harmonisation and integration of European clearing and settlement processes. So does ...
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Features
Risk, return and pension funds
When it comes to economic policy, there is much to criticise about the centre-left government of German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder. Despite an unemployment rate not seen since the 1930s – namely around 5m – Schröder’s government is still not doing enough to make Germany’s labour market more flexible. Schröder’s government ...
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Features
Interest rate risk matching for pension funds
New regulations such as IFRS require pension funds to bring their interest-rate risk more in line with the interest-rate risk of their liabilities. This usually means that the duration of the fixed-income portfolio needs to be extended or the allocation to fixed-income investments increased. The latter would mean that there ...
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Features
Fund with know-how
The way corporate pension funds are managed will change with changes in the corporations that sponsor them. Few organisations demonstrate this better than DSM Pensions Services (DPS), the in-house organisation that manages the Dutch pension funds of the Dutch firm DSM, the former Dutch state mines. The company was once ...
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Features
French take notice at last
Private equity is relatively undeveloped as an investment by French pension funds. Until now, the pressures against private equity have worked both against the sector itself and the investor. Jane Welsh, senior investment consultant at Watson Wyatt says: “Opportunities to invest in private equity in France have been limited. The ...
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Features
Freeing up managers
Pension funds are increasingly considering investing in currency hedge funds instead of using a currency overlay programme. Emmanuel Acar, head of London Risk Management Advisory at Bank of America, says this is one of the trends emerging in the currency management sphere. “Pension funds are now considering allocating to currency ...
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Features
Show me the money flows
In just a few years, the business of institutional investment research has gone through seismic shifts. These shifts have been prompted in part by the exposure of tainted recommendations and conflicts of interest among research analysts on both sides of the Atlantic. In some cases, analysts were not only expected ...
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Features
Are one-stop shops feasible?
Firms that offer multi-management investment services can save pension funds a great deal of administrative hassle – they provide the client with a layer of diversification without them having to deal with a large number of individual fund managers. And some multi-managers in Europe are now going a step further. ...
