All Opinion Pieces articles – Page 49
-
Opinion Pieces
Can PE save the world?
When private equity players come together to discuss how to be more responsible, that is noteworthy.
-
Opinion Pieces
Flavien Duval, Risk officer, Edmond de Rothschild Asset Management
Thousands of reports are produced and distributed to hundreds of people who don’t know what they’re supposed to do with them
-
Opinion Pieces
Letter from Brussels: EU clears the decks
The Brussels legislative programme for the financial sector will be as frenetic as ever from now until early 2013. It is a race to achieve as much as possible before electoral canvassing by MEPs starts ahead of the parliamentary elections in May 2014.
-
Opinion Pieces
Long-term Matters: Kay - make your voice heard
The Kay review is the best thing we’ve had on short-termism for decades
-
Opinion Pieces
LIBOR litigation looms
US pension funds are still trying to understand the impact of the LIBOR scandal on their assets to assess whether they should launch a class action against the banks involved in the case. The matter is highly complex and could lead to tens of billions of dollars in claims, not just from pension funds but also from cities, states, lenders, insurers and other investors who say they were hurt by the allegedly manipulated rates.
-
Opinion Pieces
Long-term Matters: Hedge fund concerns
Hedge funds have, without doubt, delivered ‘loadsamoney’, especially for their staff and their richest and smartest customers over the past few decades. And there is also no doubt that short-selling can send a useful signal to the market about hidden risks.
-
Opinion Pieces
Letter from the US: MAP-21 skirts IASB
Under the seemingly innocuous Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act (or MAP-21 for short), new accounting rules have been approved in the US that will affect their private pension funds. But will it be for better or for worse?
-
Opinion Pieces
Peter Kraneveld, Secretary of the Association for European Retirement Education
“Supervision should be made responsible for pension quality, not just for solvency”
-
Opinion Pieces
Letter from Brussels: Ins and outs of ‘flexileg’
In the old days, an international investment bank could study a Brussels Directive or Regulation and make plans.
-
Opinion Pieces
Long-term Matters: Starting in their back yards
Foundations often exist to do public good. Their mission should be both to invest and provide grants. Protecting capital should be a priority; foundations do not need to be liability driven, have no reason to herd, and could use their long-term nature as a source of competitive advantage.
-
Opinion Pieces
Letter from the US: Taft-Hartley blues
Labour unions are not having the best time. Last month they suffered a major setback in Wisconsin, where Governor Walker won a recall election against union members and Democrats, who were protesting against his law removing most collective-bargaining rights from public employees. One reason why the unions lost is that those rights had assured very generous pension benefits to unionised public employees.
-
Opinion Pieces
Letter from Brussels: A welcome day
You can almost hear the sound of satisfied occupational pension fund representatives rubbing their hands together at the news that the IORP II Directive has been postponement.
-
Opinion Pieces
Chris Sutton, Towers Watson
Pension funds find themselves between a rock and the hard place as they struggle to provide for ageing populations in a tough investment climate. As a result of this, and of an inheritance of under-funding, retirement savings continue to attract media and public policy attention. Will pension funds be overcome by looming threats or seize the opportunity for change?
-
Opinion Pieces
Letter from Brussels: HFT debate hots up
The debate in Brussels on high-frequency trading (HFT) is heating up. The main forum is the European Parliament’s economic and monetary affairs committee (ECON), which in July will clarify its position with a vote.
-
Opinion Pieces
Virginie Maisonneuve & Katherine Davidson, Schroders
“Maternity wards and primary schools in London are experiencing a spike in births, and retailers should benefit”
-
Opinion Pieces
Wisdom of independence
In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, independent US asset managers have increased their revenues and profitability more than the asset-management subsidiaries of the larger US financial institutions. Publicly traded asset managers posted median profitability of 35% last year, compared with 25% for subsidiaries, and grew revenues 15% during 2011, compared with 6% for subsidiaries, according to recent analysis from Casey, Quirk & Associate, a consultant to the global asset management industry.
-
Opinion Pieces
Long-term Matters: Shareholder Spring?
The recent AGM votes on executive pay at UBS, Barclays, Aviva and Citi are obvious signs of fundamental change, no?
-
Opinion Pieces
EC backing for VC
Radical changes in opportunities to invest in venture capital (VC) are emerging via the EU, including in Brussels, where the European Parliament is now vetting a draft Regulation on European Venture Capital Funds. The package aims to make it easier for VC funds to raise capital from across the EU.
-
Opinion Pieces
Jeroen Wilbrink & Jelle Beenen
In the Guest Viewpoint column of IPE March 2012, Kees Cools and Anton van Nunen claimed that the current calculation used in assessing the health of a pension scheme is incorrect. They also claimed it had forced pension schemes to sell ‘cheap’ equities in favour of ‘expensive’ sovereign bonds, and that this selling has depressed prices of equities.
-
Opinion Pieces
Politics of change
The nomination of Mitt Romney as the Republican candidate to the White House may bring a lot of attention to the US pension fund industry. If he wins the election on 6 November, he could introduce a partial privatisation of Social Security, the compulsory insurance programme funded through payroll taxes. The first president to talk about privatising it was also a Republican one, George W Bush, but his proposal went nowhere.
