All Opinion Pieces articles – Page 9
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Opinion PiecesSolvency II: Rule changes can’t force risk taking
Changing the rules can often seem like a very sensible policy choice – whether a sweeping deregulatory reform or more of a technocratic adjustment to regulations.
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Opinion PiecesGuest viewpoint: Let’s make ESG real, and call out the fakes
Environmental, social and governance (ESG) investing has become pretty much mainstream. At its ideological base is the belief that a capitalist economy and polity that seeks the well-being of its middle class can achieve positive change by mobilising investment flows – in particular, that environmental protection and social justice can come about by correcting where investments are channelled.
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Opinion PiecesLetter from Berlin: The German way to supervise the EU Taxonomy
The German financial supervisory authority, BaFin, has chosen its own path to deal with the EU taxonomy – in particular when it comes to nuclear and gas.
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Opinion PiecesAustralia: Role for superannuation in nation-building
A new Labor government has set the scene for change in Australia’s growing superannuation industry to ensure that some of the country’s A$3.3trn (€2,3trn) savings pool is directed toward social housing and the energy transition.
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Opinion PiecesTrustees must assess impact of rate hikes
The Bank of England (BoE) has hiked its policy rate by 50bps to 2.25%, prioritising the fight against inflation over support for growth in its domestic economy. This interest rate increase has hit levels not seen since the end of 2008 but in line with a majority of economists’ consensus.
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Opinion PiecesItaly’s far-right government won’t bring about great changes
The largely anticipated outcome of the Italian election was a strong mandate for the centre-right coalition. This would hardly be a new scenario, were it not for the fact that this time the chosen leader is Giorgia Meloni of Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy), a right-wing party with historical links with fascism.
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Opinion PiecesViewpoint: Irredeemably irrational – why using IRR to benchmark and pick funds makes no sense
With the continuing proliferation of managers, strategies and funds, wouldn’t it be wonderful if there was one simple metric that could help determine which to back (and which to avoid)? The good news: there is. The bad news: you’re probably not using it.
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Opinion PiecesViewpoint: Impact investing – socially responsible investing reimagined
Investment in support of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) has more than doubled over the last two years. Yet impact investing has aroused skepticism.
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Opinion PiecesViewpoint: Five myths about alternative investments
Alternatives can help investors pursue their goals by being a source of new opportunities
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Opinion PiecesUS: The great unfreeze - does it make sense to reopen DB plans?
US defined benefit (DB) public and corporate pension funds are responding differently to inflationary pressures. Public schemes are more concerned about the negative impact of financial market turmoil on their returns, while corporates are enjoying the rising discount rates that are lowering their liabilities and improving their funded status.
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Opinion PiecesHeatwaves remind us climate finance is more than net zero
In the middle of the now-famous speech that ended Stuart Kirk’s tenure as HSBC’s head of responsible investment, he said something that got lost. While most of Kirk’s controversial May presentation on ‘why investors need not worry about climate risk’ was picked apart on social media and in the press – resulting in his suspension and exit from the asset manager – his slide on climate adaptation (or ‘adaption’) was largely ignored.
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Opinion PiecesInstitutional capital for energy resilience
Ukraine’s independence day on 24 August also marked six months since the start of Russia’s invasion and with it a profound shift in the global geopolitical and economic balance.
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Opinion PiecesAustralia: Downturn casts a shadow over super anniversary
Australia’s superannuation industry enters its fourth decade under the darkening clouds of a global economic slowdown that is already having a dramatic impact on returns.
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Opinion PiecesNotes from Amsterdam: Reform speeds up consolidation
With each passing day the likelihood diminishes that the law on the future of pensions (Wet toekomst pensioenen) will come into force as planned on 1 January next year. The law was sent to parliament in spring this year, but a date for parliamentary discussion is yet to be set.
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Opinion PiecesGuest viewpoint: Pension funds and the EU’s sustainability agenda
The European Commission’s Sustainable Finance Strategy, published in summer 2021, sets out how it will support the EU Green Deal and Europe’s transition to carbon neutrality by 2050.
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Opinion PiecesPrivate managers ‘not serious’ about climate
Fears about the effect of human activity from the climate date from the ancient Greeks, but it was not until the 1980s that scientists began to unite for action on climate change, and the warnings have only escalated since. Too often they have been ignored or denied.
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Opinion PiecesESG Viewpoint: Article 9 of SFDR – the new green lodestar?
Regrettably, the EU’s Taxonomy for Sustainable Activities has gone from proposing “real change” to “may be imperfect”. These are the polite words of EU financial services commissioner Mairead McGuinness. Less politely, Greta Thunberg judged that the taxonomy simply “takes greenwashing to a completely new level [since t]he people in power do not even pretend to care any more. They just label fossil gas as green and nuclear waste as pollution controllable over the next 100,000 years.”
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Opinion PiecesViewpoint: The realisation of private asset illiquidity risk
The divergence in performance between asset classes over the first half of 2022 has been extreme.
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Opinion PiecesViewpoint: New UK government taskforce signals importance of ESG
There has been substantial progress in climate-related and governance issues, but social factors, have not always received as much attention.
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Opinion PiecesViewpoint: Definition conundrum not a reason to ditch ESG
The difficulty of measuring ESG criteria should not be a reason to ditch the term altogether, according to the Dutch pension federation
