All Opinion Pieces articles – Page 48
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Opinion Pieces
End s-factor blindness
Sustainable capitalism is now in vogue. This is very welcome but advocates would have more credibility and impact if they paid greater attention to the ‘s’ (social) of ESG.
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Opinion Pieces
Put the bee back in beta
What is the price of a bee? And more generally, where does the extinction of bee populations – and with bees much of agriculture as we know it – fit into discounted cash flow and other investment/risk decision-making tools?
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Opinion Pieces
Big picture questions
BlackRock, the world’s largest money manager, has reached a record $3.8trn (€2.8trn) in assets, about 60% of which is for institutional clients, including pensions. CEO Larry Fink, commenting on his firm’s 2012 results, said that the institutional business will launch a “strategic client programme” this year.
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Opinion Pieces
Letter from Brussels: Social and labour issues
Disputes between Brussels and national governments are likely to emerge when the European Commission unveils in June its position on the rules concerning national social and labour law (SLL).
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Opinion Pieces
Rhodri Preece, director of capital markets policy, CFA Institute
Does dark trading hurt market quality? It is a question that has vexed policymakers for some time, and has attracted renewed focus recently following certain exchange initiatives to establish non-displayed trading pools for retail orders. Understanding the relationship between dark liquidity and market quality has become central to the debate on market structure as authorities around the world consider revisions to their respective regulatory frameworks. Measures to support fair competition between displayed and non-displayed trading venues should be the focus of those efforts.
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Opinion Pieces
Letter from the US: Back from the edge
If there was a clear message from the whole ‘fiscal cliff’ debate, it is that social security will be affected sooner or later. Employees need to realise that company-sponsored pension plans will become an even more important supplement to their retirement income.
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Opinion Pieces
Heinz Rudolph, Lead pension specialist, World Bank
Between 1997 and 2008, 11 countries in central and eastern Europe (CEE) implemented multi-pillar pension reforms, which involved the creation of mandatory funded schemes. These reforms were motivated by a foreseeable reduction in future pension contributions and extended benefit payments as a result of falling birth rates and people living longer.
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Opinion Pieces
Letter from Brussels: Enforcement problems
Enhancement to the EU’s successful UCITS legislation for cross-border collective investments is now underway. But there are nagging concerns that whatever the outcome for UCITS V, the good work could be undone by member states and their judicial systems failing to enforce common rules.
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Opinion Pieces
Let’s measure advisers
Investment consultants are so easy to blame. But on ESG matters, they are now doing some very important work – perhaps a result of prodding in earlier years. Now it’s time to reward consultants for faster progress and help them become the powerful facilitator for sustainable investing that they could be, and also help their leaders deal with the immunity to change that they face.
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Opinion Pieces
Letter from the US: Battle of the benefits
Obama’s healthcare reform will be the biggest new law affecting US companies in 2013. But will it have an impact on pension funds? Healthcare and retirement benefits are managed separately, but a change in costs for the former will eventually affect the latter.
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Opinion Pieces
Letter from Brussels: Soup-kitchen future?
There are increasing forecasts of widespread poverty for Europe’s pensioners in future decades. For a start, there are the 60m citizens in the EU who do not have an occupational scheme. Longevity combined with feeble returns on investment, plus millions of young, non-contributing unemployed people, support the forecast of misery.
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Opinion Pieces
Carl Hitchman, Partner, Hymans Robertson
You have decided that fiduciary management is for you. How then do you go about choosing a suitable manager? While most consultants and managers have been advising on and managing assets for many years, they now overlap in terms of these capabilities, which poses additional challenges. How are fiduciary managers meeting these challenges and structuring themselves to provide clients with the confidence to appoint them?
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Opinion Pieces
A dozen reasons to be hopeful
The Chinese word for crisis has two characters – ‘danger’ and ‘opportunity’. Holding apparently contradictory ideas together is not easy. So here are 12 reasons to be hopeful in 2013.
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Opinion Pieces
Amin Rajan: 'Pension funds demand discipline, but discipline can stifle hedge funds' creativity'
First, the good news: assets under management in hedge funds have not only surpassed their previous peak of around $2trn (€1.6trn) reached in 2007, but they are also likely to attract another trillion dollars by 2016, according to ‘Institutional Investment in Hedge Funds’, a survey by Citi Prime Finance.
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Opinion Pieces
Letter from Brussels: Deaf ears for EC claims
Summer 2013 might be some way off but it is when the European Commission intends to publish its proposals for IORP II. And signs from the Commission are that the usual procrastination is no longer intended.
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Opinion Pieces
Letter from the US: Pension uncertainties
Social Security reform was notably absent from the 2012 US presidential campaign.
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Opinion Pieces
Long Term Matters: A preventable surprise
The world has been hit recently by a tsunami of corporate disaster. Then came the LIBOR scandal.
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Opinion Pieces
Joseph Mariathasan: The UK should set up a sovereign wealth fund
Britain faces the prospect of an ageing population with a consequent rise in its dependency ratio, and an economy in decline relative to the rest of the world.
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Opinion Pieces
Letter from Brussels: Lack of trust blamed for low savings
While euro-zone household savings, including retirement provision, grew steadily from around €600bn gross savings at the end of the century to a peak of €910bn in 2009, they fell to €834bn by 2011.
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Opinion Pieces
Letter from the US: Colleges count losses
US college and university endowments had the worst returns of any insitutional investor in the year ended 30 June 2012
