More comment – Page 57
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Features
When China sneezes… 2014
The spectre of the volatility that struck emerging markets in 2013 hangs over many of the investment pages of this month’s IPE. And no wonder – it feels like last year provided confirmation, at last, that these markets are entering a new paradigm.
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Features
On the quiet
Activist investors are sometimes a colourful breed. One of them was the now infamous Florian Homm, who fell from grace in September 2007 in spectacular style.
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Features
Large schemes warming to local investment
Dutch pension funds’ assets of €1trn were the Holy Grail for politicians and companies to plug banks’ funding gap of €478bn last year. By taking over a substantial amount of mortgage loans, pension funds could free up banks’ lending capacity and kick-start the ailing housing market and local economy.
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Opinion Pieces
Opposing oil divestment
Divestment from oil companies to stop climate change will not work. But by being largely disinterested, the investment industry has given clients and NGOs nowhere else to go. So how should investors push back against divestment?
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Opinion Pieces
Nitin Mehta, CFA Managing director, EMEA, CFA Institute
“Over recent decades, secular shifts in values have resulted in too much emphasis on profits and not enough on professionalism”
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Opinion Pieces
Not ready yet
‘Retirement readiness’ is the catch phrase of 2014 in the US pension industry.
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News
IPE Views: Liboring under false pretences
The Libor and Euribor fines expose not only the importance of engagement, but also the cost of inaction for pension funds
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Features
The fiduciary fight
Should trustees feel constrained by the existing interpretation of their fiduciary duties?
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Opinion Pieces
Matthew Kiernan, Inflection Point Capital Man. & Paul Clements-Hunt, The Blended Capital Group:“Investors who fail to develop systematically aware investment processes risk commercial extinction”
There is no shortage of high-wattage brainpower directed to the promotion of longer-term finance and investing.
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Opinion Pieces
A phoney war for KID
A phoney war is in operation. No guns are being fired. No bombs falling. But there a number of indications of an arms race over the matter of a simple two page information document known as KID – and its possible extension to cover the occupational pension sector.
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Opinion Pieces
Too big to fail?
Are US asset management firms ‘too big to fail’? In other words, do they represent systemic risks similar to those posed by the largest banks, so much that they must be subject to ‘enhanced’ supervision?
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Features
Funds to increase infrastructure investment
Nearly two-thirds of pension funds and other institutional investors expect their allocations to infrastructure to increase over the next 18 months, according to a survey by IPE and Stirling Capital Partners.
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Opinion Pieces
ESG 2.0 – let’s get serious
The responsible investment community has done something very important. It has raised awareness that institutional investors who define their job as beating the peer group benchmark are being irresponsible – stewardship responsibilities for the long term are now on the agenda. But the current trading-oriented model of investment is impossible to align with these responsibilities.
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Opinion PiecesElizabeth Corley: “Drawing on behavioural science, we should be thinking more holistically about income lifecycles”
For everyone managing pension funds, or their investments, or indeed managing our own retirement planning, one of the greatest challenges is to maintain a focus on achieving long-term strategic goals amid the constant buffeting of contradictory news and the distraction of more pressing concerns.
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Features
Adding the best of DB to DC plans
In the final article in the current series, Nicholas Lyster and Amin Rajan argue that despite the demise of DB plans, the baby is unlikely to be thrown away with the bath water
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Opinion Pieces
A Lithuanian bottleneck
Yet another Brussels go-slow on IORP II legislative revisions? Yes, but it’s not just rules for occupational pensions. A let’s-put-off-until-tomorrow syndrome is hammering swathes of financial legislation and the Brussels machine is now close to deadlock.
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Opinion Pieces
Activist stances
US public pension funds are slowly recovering from their worst years, 2008-09, when their assets fell to a low of $2.1trn (€1.6trn). In the latest fiscal year ending 30 June 2013, assets increased 8.4%
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Opinion Pieces
Per Linnemann - Independent consulting actuary
“Smoothed income annuities could revive the pension fund industry”
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Opinion PiecesThe assets of healthcare
A trend that has already taken place in pensions is now happening in the healthcare sector in the US
