All Opinion Pieces articles – Page 45
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Opinion Pieces
Guest viewpoint: “Macro matters. We ignore it at our peril”
Open a newspaper. Any newspaper. Read the front page and then the business pages. Absorb, assimilate, repeat. After half a dozen goes, you may notice a pattern.
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Opinion Pieces
Letter from the US: Pensions and start-ups
Can pension funds play a greater role in stimulating start-ups and economic growth? Some US politicians think so and are trying to deploy public retirement assets for this goal. But critics claim that results have been disappointing so far, mostly because pension funds invest through private equity funds that demand very high fees. So a new idea is gaining support – pension funds investing directly in private companies, cutting out intermediaries.
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Opinion Pieces
Crony capitalism
The public gets it. Academics and financial analysts get it. In fact, many experts say it is the most important governance and democracy issue of our time. So why do investors have so little to say about political donations and the corporate capture of politics?
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Opinion Pieces
“Governance can serve as a stimulus to improve and nurture pension organisations”
Once a year, the US professional basketball league organises its all-star competition. Players from teams across the country are selected as the best in their respective positions. Could we have an all-star pension industry, uniting the best standards and practices under one roof?
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Opinion Pieces
A stinging rebuke
The private pension product sector is “persistently the worst-performing retail services market of all throughout the European Union”, according to the European Commission, as cited in a new report.
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Opinion Pieces
Woody at work
Woody is the villain of the new book The US Pension Crisis – What We Need to Do Now to Save America’s Pensions, by Ronald Ryan. According to Ryan, Woody is the “pension pencil” or “the weapon of mass destruction in financial America”, used since the 1990s for accounting gimmicks that conceal the real financial situation of pension funds.
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Opinion Pieces
Rethink on alternatives
After five strong years in the equity markets, some US pension funds are disappointed by the performance of their alternative assets and moving out, while others are keeping them but focusing on de-risking.
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Opinion Pieces
“The best CDC design is collective implementation with clear ownership rights”
Designing a robust retirement income solution is not easy – as with most complex issues, there are no silver bullets, only trade-offs. The challenge is to balance life-long retirement income stability with financial risk-taking, all within a framework that is understandable, transparent and fair and hence can be trusted by members.
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Opinion Pieces
Learning disabilities
Who would invest in a sector that has lagged the Stoxx 600 by 1.1% in overall growth and by 0.3% in EPS growth for the last 19 years on an annual basis?
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Opinion Pieces
On track with 401(k)
Individual retirement savings accounts (IRAs) have been helping US workers navigate the ups and downs of Wall Street since the 2008 financial crisis. IRAs and employer-sponsored defined contribution (DC) plans grew to $6.5trn and $5.9trn (€4.8trn and €4.3trn), respectively, at year-end 2013, up from $5.6trn and $5trn the previous year, according to data in the 2014 Investment Company Fact Book.
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Opinion Pieces
“Italian employees have great need of consistent additional pension coverage”
Assets managed by pension funds in Italy equate to about 6% of its gross domestic product. In a country where the social security system provides an adequate level of coverage at retirement that would not be a concern. But in Italy, after all the recent reforms, this situation represents a relevant risk for both employees and employers. Benefits provided by the social security system have strongly decreased over the last 20 years and the retirement age raised considerably.
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Opinion Pieces
Is divesting working?
OK, it doesn’t work very well. We’re still on track for runaway climate change, according to Fatih Birol, chief economist of the International Energy Authority.
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Opinion Pieces
What's outstanding
The EU’s institutional world is starting a new term. Now that the parliamentary elections are over, the commissioners have only until the end of October before their replacements take up office. With the increasing presence of euro-sceptic MEPs, it could be a stressful five years ahead.
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Opinion Pieces
Bart Heenk, Managing director, Avida International
“A balanced scorecard enables trustees to monitor, assess and improve outsourced services”
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Opinion Pieces
Lighting dark corners
The European Commission’s planned revisions to rules on shareholder rights aim to encourage a culture of long-term equity investment across the EU.
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Opinion Pieces
TIAA-CREF expands
Six years after taking the helm as president and CEO of the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association – College Retirement Equities Fund (TIAA-CREF), Roger Ferguson announced the acquisition of Nuveen Investments in April for $6.25bn (€4.5bn), including debt.
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Opinion Pieces
M&A medicine
The debate about Pfizer’s proposed takeover of the UK’s AstraZeneca – which should have resolved itself by the time you read this – reminds us that there are some big unanswered questions relating to institutional investors and M&A activity.
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Opinion Pieces
The countdown begins
The countdown has started. By the end of May, 751 members of the European Parliament will have been selected by as many of the 400m electors who care enough to vote.
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Opinion Pieces
Body of evidence
When I was training to be a doctor, the advent of evidence-based medicine (EBM) was a major step forward.
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Opinion Pieces
Nigel Waterson, Chairman of trustees, Now Pensions
“There is one universal truth upon which virtually everyone agrees – the UK annuities market is broken”
