More comment – Page 50
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Opinion Pieces
Letter from Brussels: Focus on low returns
Dismally low returns on EU pension fund investments over 15 years? The allegation comes in a study by Better Finance, the European Federation of Investors & Financial Services Users. The report, Pensions Savings: The Real Return, points to excessive fees, points to other charges, and badly framed taxation rules, as the culprits.
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Opinion Pieces
Letter from the US: Lower expectations
Most US state retirement systems are cutting their investment return predictions. But this is still not enough, according to critics, and a minority of public pension funds are retaining optimistic assumptions and aggressive strategies.
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Opinion Pieces
Greece’s Private Sector: Hope lies in SMEs
Is the EU a community of states or just a trade organisation structured to stimulate demand in favour of the stronger economies? That existential question can provoke much discussion, but the relationship between the EU and Greece in the years ahead may provide the real answer.
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Opinion Pieces
Guest Viewpoint: Mark Fawcett - National Employment Savings Trust (UK)
It is early days for the UK’s new pension regime under which DC savers no longer have to buy an annuity. However, there are already lessons to be learned from the reforms.
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Features
Pulled in two directions
It is understandable that politicians covet institutional capital to help finance future economic growth
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Opinion Pieces
Letter from the US: From small beginnings
The US private retirement annuity market is quite small. But it is likely to grow dramatically thanks to the convergence of various factors
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Features
This is not a debt crisis
The widely held claim that the world is in the latter stages of a prolonged debt crisis should be challenged on more than one count
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Opinion PiecesLetter from Brussels: Pressure builds on tax havens
Brussels’ financial focus is on aggressive corporate tax planning and the related question of tax havens. This concerns the hedge fund ‘passport’ rights to do business across the EU and compliance of the offshore jurisdictions where they are domiciled to EU norms.
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Features
Long-term views required
For institutional investors with long-term time horizons, equities make a lot of sense, particularly when bond markets appear to be in a government induced bubble
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Opinion Pieces
Long-Term Matters: Call to voting advisers
For Sir Mark Moody-Stuart, former chairman of Shell and Anglo American, the hopeful thing about climate change today is that big investors are getting engaged.
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Opinion Pieces
Guest Viewpoint: Philip Neyt - Belgian Association of Pension Institutions
Notwithstanding further reforms, most EU member states have improved the efficiency and financial affordability of their first-pillar pension systems
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Features
Prudence penalty
As we mark seven years since the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers this month, the blunt instrument of regulation still hangs over pension funds with respect to European derivatives trading
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Features
China’s importance still underplayed
The turmoil in China is both less serious and more serious than generally assumed.
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Features
Smart questions
There are plenty of interesting questions surrounding smart beta investment in an institutional context. First, does it work? Apparently it does, as academics find more and more evidence that it pays to have passive exposure to factors such as value, low volatility and small-caps.
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Opinion Pieces
Long-term Matters: Learning from coal
Last month the chief executive of Norges Bank Investment Management, Yngve Slyngstad, offered an implicit admission of error
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Opinion Pieces
Letter from Brussels: A tricky path ahead
The process of making pensions policy in Brussels between now and end of the year resembles two juggernauts moving towards each other
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Opinion Pieces
Letter from the US: A new way of thinking
Three years ago car makers Ford and General Motors opened the way to a new means of de-risking defined-benefit (DB) pension plans. They offered a lump sum to participants who were receiving benefits
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Opinion Pieces
Guest Viewpoint: Jason Hsu - Research Affiliates
“A public hanging is a good thing now and then.” These are the words of an anonymous CEO whose sentiment would indicate that the firm he led was probably struggling to meet the service and performance expectations of its clients
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Features
Time to focus
Few would see an immediate parallel between the pension fund world and that of commercial aviation. Yet the story of the Douglas Corporation is interesting
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Features
US Equities: Elephant in the room
The US equity market is the elephant in the room for any institutional investor. It has also been a very excitable elephant with the S&P500 reaching all-time highs in the first half of 2015
