All Opinion Pieces articles – Page 13
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Opinion Pieces
Letter from Australia: Private gain as Australia’s infra assets change hands
Australian superannuation funds are playing a key role in the largest takeover yet of an Australian infrastructure asset, Sydney Airport, for A$23.6bn (€15bn) in cash.
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Opinion Pieces
Letter from US: Liquidity tops the agenda for US pension plans
Monitoring and managing liquidity will be a major issue for many US pension funds in 2022. The risk of a liquidity crunch affects public systems above all, but corporate plans are not immune.
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Opinion Pieces
Viewpoint: Three high yield myths debunked
Default, convexity and liquidity – three misconceptions of high yield markets
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Opinion Pieces
Viewpoint: Do your best to heed SFDR RTS despite delay, complexity
The SFDR represents a steep learning curve for most firms, says MJ Hudson’s Emma Bickerstaffe
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Opinion Pieces
Viewpoint: Master trust consolidation set to drive value for money
Bigger is not always better, but as the trend of wider consolidation matures, bigger should represent a better deal for members
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Opinion Pieces
Viewpoint: EU must not become climate laggard over taxonomy
Andreas Hoepner criticises a proposal to raise the taxonomy-admissibility threshold for natural gas to 270gms CO2 e/kWh
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Opinion Pieces
Guest Viewpoint: Fiona Reynolds
Public and private sector leaders from around the world gathered in Glasgow for the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) last month to tackle the climate crisis and kick off the next decade of climate policy.
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Opinion Pieces
Notes from the Netherlands: Too eager to index
Most Dutch pensioners have been craving indexation ever since the financial crisis in 2008-09. Understandably, patience is running thin, especially now that inflation has reached its highest level since the introduction of the euro.
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Opinion Pieces
No right side to the inflation debate
The question of whether the current trend of rising inflation is a transitory or permanent one is not trivial. It is forcing the institutional investor community to reflect on their long-term investment strategies. Investors have to review their current approaches and get ready to make significant changes if their views prove incorrect.
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Opinion Pieces
News Notes: Economies of cost saving
The three main reasons the UK government requested that the country’s 89 Local Government Pension Schemes (LGPS) pool their assets back in 2015 were: establishing common investment vehicles to provide the pension funds with a mechanism to access economies of scale; helping them to invest more efficiently in listed and alternative assets; and reducing investment costs.
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Opinion Pieces
Letter from Australia: In need of a broader asset pool
With a market cap of just A$2.7trn (€1.75tn), Australia’s ASX stock market is increasingly overshadowed by a rapidly growing pool of super savings which now exceed A$3trn.
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Opinion Pieces
Getting ahead of the skill curve
Twenty years ago, in December 2001, Denmark’s giant labour market pension fund ATP implemented an interest-rate swap. That doesn’t seem too shocking now as liability-driven investment (LDI) is a mature and well-understood concept that is embedded in pension risk-management and regulatory practice.
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Opinion Pieces
Letter from US: Crypto currencies gain a toe-hold in America’s 401(k) retirement plans
Crypto investing is not going to become mainstream any time soon in 401(k) plans. But the US retirement market is becoming more and more sophisticated – investors are becoming interested in digital assets, and asset managers, platform providers and consultants are all developing digital products and services.
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Opinion Pieces
Viewpoint: How has the pandemic affected the UK – small-cap value investing
By Beini Zhou and Anand Vasagiri, portfolio managers, international small-cap value strategy, Artisan Partners
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Opinion Pieces
Viewpoint: What pension schemes should consider when upping renewables
Renewity’s CIO, David Hunter, outlines five considerations for pension schemes looking to up their renewables exposure
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Opinion Pieces
Viewpoint: What if COP26 fails?
Peter Kraneveld, international pensions adviser at PRIME bv., on finance issues and COP26
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Opinion Pieces
Notes from Germany: Parties mull pensions
It all started with a selfie posted on social media. The leaders of the Green party Annalena Baerbock, candidate to be chancellor, and Robert Habeck posed with the Free Democrats’ Christian Lindner and Volker Wissing to show how serious they were to bridge the divide to form a new government coalition, prior to meeting with the winner of the election, the SDP’s Olaf Scholz.
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Opinion Pieces
Letter from US: University endowments setting the pace on fossil fuel divestment
US university and college endowments control more than $600bn (€517bn) of investments. Their policies often influence the behaviour of public pensions. So it is interesting to see whether Harvard’s recent decision to end its investments in fossil fuels will be followed not only by other universities but also by retirement systems.
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Opinion Pieces
Co-investment newcomers need to be selective
The US and UK are seeing a diminishing number of companies in the listed markets whilst the private equity (PE) markets are booming. For investors, that raises a number of issues, of which fees are an important one. Private equity fees are much higher than those of listed equity managers.
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Opinion Pieces
Green bonds – a ‘no-brainer’ paragon
Institutional investors are constantly searching for the elusive ‘no-brainer’ investment: the one that offers clear additional benefits without additional risk