All IPE articles in September 2013 (Magazine)
View all stories from this issue.
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Special Report
Securities Services: Stuck in the shadows
Securities lending took a major hit in the 2008 crisis. For those funds that stayed the course, Cécile Sourbes finds new regulation promising more activity, but threatening to raise costs
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Special Report
Securities Services: Transitional, but not trivial
Most investors now recognise the advantages of specialist transition management. But Andrew Williams warns against the easy route of deploying one’s custodian to the task
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Special Report
Securities Services: New rules, new threats, new opportunities
We leave the bad news for custodians until last in this month’s special report on securities services. Andrew Williams of Mercer Sentinel outlines the difference that a good transition-management process can make relative to a bad one. Then he questions which of those categories leaving it to your custodian falls ...
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Features
What’s on the menu?
As CIO of the Wasserdicht Pension Funds in the Netherlands, I have quite a bit to do with our fund’s boards and committees. I am on the management board of what we now call the ‘investment bureau’ and in that role I have to sit in on many trustee board meetings as an observer and answer questions.
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Country Report
UK: A marriage yet to be made
Infrastructure is seen as an asset class that offers a good match for pension fund liabilities. Pádraig Floyd outlines the progress to date of the UK Pension Infrastructure Platform
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Features
UK joins the race
A new tax-transparent fund, launched this summer, puts the UK on the map for pension pooling. Gail Moss explains
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Country Report
UK: Growing pains
Gill Wadsworth surveys the UK’s growing DC pension market, whose assets look set to exceed those of DB funds by 2018
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Opinion PiecesIORP governance
Suggestions to make the basis for a systematic set of codified rules to cover the governance of occupational pension schemes across the entire EU have emerged from a working group of pension stakeholders.
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Country Report
The Netherlands: Get ready for inflation
With liquidity sloshing around the financial system, inflation may not be a matter of ‘if’, but ‘when’. Miranda Schoutsen asks whether real assets will help protect fragile nominal pensions from the relentless erosion of value
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Features
A future for swaps?
Pension funds facing new derivative-market regulation are increasingly willing to consider alternatives to traditional swaps, according to Cécile Sourbes. But the jury is still out on interest rate swap futures
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Country Report
UK: Focus on investment returns
Stuart Thomson argues that UK pension funds are likely to increase active LDI and alpha strategies as a result of TPR’s new objective to promote sustainable growth
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Country Report
UK: Soft but firm
The UK Pensions Regulator has a new statutory objective and is encouraging funds to adopt an integrated approach to risk. Jonathan Williams outlines the implications
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Features
More than meets the eye
The usual selling point for ETFs is that they are cheap, but that has rarely held for institutional investors. Anthony Harrington finds less obvious, but arguably more compelling, advantages
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Features
Nurturing Europe’s mid-market
Taron Wade and Alexandra Dimitrijevic look into efforts to expand Germany’s Schuldschein debt private-placement market to the rest of Europe
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Features
The EM story is evolving, not ending
This month will mark five years since the Lehman bankruptcy, years that have seen some changes in pension fund attitudes to risk. Counterparty risk now matters. There is ‘tail risk’.
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Country Report
UK: Spot the difference
Mel Duffield notes a positive reaction to TPR’s 2013 Funding Statement, but argues that it remains to be seen what approach the regulator will adopt in practice
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Country Report
The Netherlands: Decision time
Cabinet endorsement of the new FTK proposals means Dutch pension funds must soon choose between a nominal or a real pension framework. But some are holding out for a hybrid option, writes Nina Roehrbein
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Asset Class Reports
Emerging Market Debt: Re-calibrating risk
Early summer saw volatility back in global markets, and nowhere more so than local currency emerging market debt. Joseph Mariathasan dampens out the noise and re-assesses the underlying fundamental arguments for the asset class
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Asset Class Reports
Emerging Market Debt: Missing linkers
Emerging-market inflation-linked bonds are entering a new era. Martin Steward asks how they might fit into European institutional investors’ portfolios
