All articles by Rachel Fixsen – Page 201
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Features
An idea whose time has come
As debate continues in the UK over the future of pensions, the proposal to found multiemployer ‘Super Trusts’ has many supporters. The National Association of Pension Fund’s idea for umbrella pension schemes under which many employers would shelter has many advantages – most obviously economies of scale. But how well ...
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Features
RIsing the EM roller coaster
It is a fallacy that the world is divided into countries that have already emerged and those that are emerging, said Roger Nightingale, economic adviser to pension funds and global strategist at Millennium Global Investments, kicking off the recent IP E-Symposium on ‘Emerging markets investing’. “The vast majority of non-emerged ...
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Features
Consultants thrive in new climate
A country where pensions institutions hardly used consultants at all is now coming around to the idea. Consultants in France see their local pensions market developing steadily, helped by the new investment tools created by legislators three years ago. And they say that pension funds are increasingly likely to turn ...
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Features
Giving good advice
While trustees at pension funds may not always be experts in every field of investment, it hardly seems to matter when not only consultants, but banks and asset managers are only too willing to advise them. Some argue that the independent advice of consultancy firms is the only advice worth ...
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Features
How to choose an adviser
In a marketplace crowded with specialist fund managers, many pension funds rely heavily on a consultant to help them search for what they want and haggle once they have found it. But choosing a consultant in the first place, and then later deciding whether to keep the one they have, ...
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Features
Consultants refocus agenda
The law on occupational pensions in Belgium and the European pension fund directive both have a major impact on the management of occupational pensions, says Jos Verlinden of M&P Consult. “Although the directive in itself does not bring a revolution to pension funds in Belgium, the supervisory authority has drafted ...
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Features
Going their own way
While governments across Europe are pulling out all the stops to ensure working people are making enough provision for retirement, the dominant forms of non-state pension schemes vary from country to country. Besides corporate schemes and industry-wide schemes, professional schemes perform a vital role on the pensions stage, even though ...
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Features
Start of the pooling plunge?
Several years of work have gone into Unilever’s giant asset pooling vehicle. After a long period of decision-making, logistics and negotiation, the €5bn multi-fund vehicle, named Univest, was finally launched at the end of last year. The multinational consumer products group set up Univest to provide a central investment pool ...
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Features
Corporates aware of 'financial risk'
Treasurers at UK companies may be aware of the call for matching assets to liabilities, but putting this into investment practice is another matter altogether. According to a survey by Mercer Human Resource Consulting, nearly half of treasurers and CFOs at British companies believed investors would prefer them to follow ...
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Features
Go global or go local?
With pensions funding now top of the agenda for sponsors as well as trustees, many multinationals are keen to understand more about the schemes they back. Using a large international consultancy to get an overview can help them do this, and some companies are going down that route. But at ...
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Features
Why pensions funds are on agenda
Over the last two years, the spotlight at investment banks has been directed towards pension funds. The banks have set up their own pensions groups to tackle the problems of liability mismatches and other risk issues. But if the banks serve corporate clients, how and why did they end up ...
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Features
Commission clawback
With cost cutting a priority for most pension funds, providers of commission recapture programmes should have no trouble persuading funds to sign up. After all, commission recapture gives investors a systematic way of recouping some of the brokerage commission they pay. But not all pension clients make use of it, ...
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Features
Hidden costs of trading revealed
Most trustees have no problem in seeing why investment performance must be monitored. The success or failure of the entire fund is at stake. But when it comes to putting transaction costs under the microscope, the exercise can sometimes seem too arcane to bother with. Still, many pension funds are ...
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Features
The new quasi-consultants
The specialist pensions groups at the investment banks have a lot to offer trustees. They can be a valuable source of expertise particularly when it comes to using complex financial instruments to solve the liability mismatches plaguing many funds. But just whose side are they on, and is their advice ...
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Features
Active returns dominate
ABP Dutch fund ABP - the largest pension fund in Europe with assets of e180bn - has made sweeping changes in the way it runs its portfolio in the last three years. The portion of its equities that was run on an indexed basis - 45-50% - was reduced ...
