All Opinion Pieces articles – Page 44
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Opinion Pieces
Letter from Brussels: Uphill battle for CMU
There is enthusiasm for the EU’s capital market union (CMU) project. However, it faces prodigious obstacles in achieving its 2019 deadline.
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Opinion Pieces
Guest viewpoint: Karel Lannoo - Centre for European Policy Studies
Despite years of harmonising regulation and a single currency, Europe’s capital markets remain fragmented
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Opinion Pieces
Letter from the US: Move to put clients first
Who will manage the new My Retirement Account (MyRA) pension savings vehicle? This is a big question for the US pension fund industry now that President Barack Obama has created the new programme.
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Opinion Pieces
Long-term Matters: Dear Finance Minister
In March 2015, leading investment consultants gathered at the residence of a leading UK financier to discuss dangerous climate risk. This is a hypothetical letter from one of the participants.
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Opinion Pieces
Letter from Brussels: Bumpy road ahead
As far as investment is concerned, the EU faces a turbulent 2015. The efforts of Jean-Claude Juncker are central to arresting the EU economy from its zombie state.
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Opinion Pieces
Viewpoint: Alternatives to the Holistic Balance Sheet
Wilfried Mulder and Niels Kortleve outline a two-step approach as an alternative for a harmonised solvency regime for IORPs
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Opinion Pieces
Guest viewpoint: Sally Bridgeland - Avida International
“Looking beyond the UK may provide lessons on how maturing pension funds can rework investment governance”
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Opinion Pieces
Long-term matters: Of herds and bubbles
There is much talk in the investment community of the long term and fundamentals. Yet behaviour remains rather short term in practice
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Opinion Pieces
Letter from the US: Funding under pressure
Wall Street posted record highs in 2014 but this was not enough to compensate for other negative factors affecting US corporate pension plans. Their funding status dropped from 89% at the end of 2013 to 80% by the end of 2014, according to Towers Watson, and the pension deficit increased to $343bn (€303bn), doubling that of 2013. Overall pension plan funding fell by $181bn.
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Opinion Pieces
Guest viewpoint: Bernhard Wiesner - Bosch Group
Does the new IORP II Directive reflect the needs of sponsoring companies and their IORPs in Europe?
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Opinion Pieces
Letter from Brussels: Pensions in their sights
EU big shots working on how to release capital flows from funds into SMEs under the new Capital Market Union (CMU) programme should look at an existing scheme with similar aims.
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Opinion Pieces
Letter from the US: A model for future cuts?
The pension industry is concerned with the consequences of a bipartisan amendment to the $1.1trn (€924 bn) ominbus spending bill that Congress approved in December. This cuts benefits for multi-employer plan members and experts are now debating whether it is a model for further cuts across the industry.
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Opinion Pieces
Long-term Matters: Taxing questions
Tax wasn’t a material issue for ESG – let alone traditional – investors a few years ago, but now it is. So how did this happen and what does it tell us about other issues which are currently dismissed as non-material?
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Opinion Pieces
Guest viewpoint: Con Keating - BrightonRock Group
With 78% of pension funds considering themselves long-term investors in an IPE Focus Group survey, it would be tempting to believe that dramatic progress had been made towards achieving the objectives of the Kay Review on UK equity markets.
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Opinion Pieces
Letter from the US: Data managers
Technological tools, data management, attention to governance and transparency are the most important issues for pension fund CIOs right now.
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Opinion Pieces
Guest Viewpoint: “Asset owners and managers need to address the problems in the investment industry and focus on value for the ultimate beneficiaries”
We need to move on from today’s investment world, which essentially has been built by intermediaries for intermediaries. Their purposes have become too narrow and too self-centred to be of sustainable value to asset owners, who are charged with transporting and growing savings across time – affordably, securely and fairly.
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Opinion Pieces
Research: Ageing demographics are an asset allocation game changer
Two of the four worst bear markets of the last century rocked the world of investing over just seven years in the last decade. They sidelined conventional wisdom on risk premia and diversification.
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Opinion Pieces
Letter from the US: End to pensions taboo
Pension reform is no longer a taboo subject for voters: this is one of the outcomes of the 4 November mid-term elections.
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Opinion Pieces
Every lesson helps
Here are 12 things arising from the Tesco accounting debacle that pension funds could deploy which would help prevent, or at least mitigate, similar implosions.
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Opinion Pieces
Letter from Brussels: Capital market union
The capital market union (CMU) is a new emphasis in Brussels and Jonathan Hill, the new Commissioner for financial services, mentioned the subject repeatedly at his initial vetting by MEPs.
