Liam Kennedy
Liam is IPE’s editorial director and a board director of IPE International Publishers Ltd.
He has over 20 years’ experience as a financial journalist and editor, specialising in the field of institutional investment and pension funds. He is also a regular speaker/moderator at industry events around the world.
Prior to joining IPE in 2007, Liam spent nearly seven years at the Financial Times group in London, where he worked as a specialist editor and writer and launched a number of European pension and investment titles.
Contact info
- Tel:
- +44 (0)20 3465 9300
- Email:
- liam.kennedy@ipe.com
Opinion PiecesWhy General Electric’s pension management model has finally passed its prime
The late Jack Welch, CEO of General Electric for two decades until 2001, was not only a legendary businessman who grew GE’s market cap 30-fold over his tenure. He also inspired a minor revolution in pension fund management that dates back to the days of mainframe computers and telex machines.
InterviewsMercer’s Rich Nuzum: soft skills are the hardest in investment governance
Mercer’s recent acquisition of Vanguard’s outsourced chief investment officer (CIO) business and its sale of two administration units points to changes in asset management as firms continue to focus on core activities.
Opinion PiecesHow effective is your shareholder voting strategy?
F Scott Fitzgerald famously wrote that “the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function”.
Opinion PiecesCorporate pensions: a close eye on yields in 2024
The final two months of 2023 saw a return to form for global fixed income and equities, with respectable single and double-digit numbers in each case. After a false start in early 2023, at least for a multitude of asset forecasters, bonds were finally back in the final months of last year.
Opinion PiecesPensions are instrumental in Europe’s unfinished capital markets project
This summer will mark 10 years since Jean-Claude Juncker, former EU Commission president, outlined a vision for a European Capital Markets Union (CMU) – a project both uncompleted and still acutely needed.
Opinion PiecesWill social partners carve a new role for themselves in pensions?
Social partnership can mean different things in many countries, or very little at all in others. The concept resonates most in continental Europe, where a tripartite framework of social-market capitalism has taken root since the second world war, in which corporatist decision-making involving government, labour and employer voices is entrenched.
InterviewsFiera Capital: Montreal’s succession story
If Fiera Capital were a retail store it might need a big shop window. It is perhaps better known in the institutional world outside Canada for strategies like real assets but Fiera is a full-service asset manager that is also a big deal in its home town of Montreal.
Opinion PiecesIreland – future pensions tiger
Ireland stands a few policy steps away from the creation of a serious first and second-pillar pensions architecture that will improve the country’s international standing in terms of retirement provision.
Opinion PiecesDoes the UK really need to consolidate thousands of DB schemes?
The UK’s so-called Mansion House Reforms are under way. This cluster of policies takes its name from the residence of the Lord Mayor of the City of London, which is the venue for a regular set-piece policy speech by British chancellors of the exchequer, the latest of whom is Jeremy Hunt.
AnalysisUK pension industry reacts to government’s ambitious Mansion House Reform agenda
September saw the close of key pension reform consultations. Pamela Kokoszka and Liam Kennedy assess the proposals and some of the responses
Opinion PiecesEurope escaped the Great Retirement Boom but watch out for the crunch
Continental Europe appears to have largely escaped the trend known in the US as the ‘Great Retirement Boom’, where an economically comfortable cohort of 50 to 64-year-olds has retreated from work in the post-COVID period.
Special ReportTop 1000 Pension Funds 2023: Europe’s pensions absorb a €646bn loss
Last year saw a net reduction in the asset stock of European pension investment retirement pools of 6.77% over the previous year, according to IPE’s annual study of the leading 1,000 pension funds across the continent, marking a sea change for pensions.
Opinion PiecesCapital competition: where does it leave sustainability goals?
For pension funds and other similar large institutional pools of capital, there is significant pressure from politicians to invest in politically favoured domestic sectors – like renewables or high-growth sectors like venture capital.
Special ReportIPE Top 500 Asset Managers 2023: Asset management at a pivotal point
Data highlights from IPE Top 500 Asset Managers 2023: 2022 global asset management AUM is €102.6trn | 5.5% reduction on the 2022 total of €108.6trn | Global institutional AUM: €35.1trn | European institutional assets: €11.5trn
Opinion PiecesBetter the equity market devil you know?
Being a large equity investor in a relatively small domestic market can have advantages as well as drawbacks. Proximity to the market and its infrastructure, good knowledge of corporates and corporate leaders, and the ability to exercise strong influence as an owner, potentially a stable long-term one, all count among the advantages. The need to avoid concentration – in terms of position, sizing and overall allocations – and idiosyncratic sector exposure are among the challenges.
InterviewsVontobel: Builders in a changing landscape
Christel Rendu de Lint, a veteran of Swiss asset and wealth management, sees herself as a builder. This claim has justification given her track record at UBP, where she built a fixed-income capability from scratch to CHF20bn (€20.5bn) over 12 years.
NewsNew PPF proposals would represent ‘seismic changes’ to UK pensions landscape
Plans would mean ‘struggling’ DB schemes could choose to opt-in to the Pension Protection Fund
Opinion PiecesLDI lessons: be wary of future traps
After the global financial crisis of 2008-09, world leaders meeting at the Pittsburgh G20 summit mandated central clearing for derivatives. This was to allow for greater supervisory oversight and to mitigate against the unintended build-up of risks of the kind that almost toppled the financial system in the guise of over-the-counter credit default swaps.
Opinion PiecesBanking crisis delivers a lesson on equity strategy
We may never know the precise reasons why the in-house equity team of Alecta, the €105bn Swedish pension scheme, chose to invest in excess of €1bn in risky US banks including Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), much of which has now been written off.
Opinion PiecesMight Ukraine’s distressed assets one day look attractive to pension funds?
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 has tested Europe’s political and economic resolve. But where Vladimir Putin attempted to sow discord, he instead has failed to divide the West.
