Asset Allocation – Page 161
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Features
Unilever sets up €5bn asset pooling
Consumer products group Unilever has set up a pension asset pooling vehicle called Univest which could grow to around €3-5bn in size. The firm said Univest was expected to reduce risk and enhance net return potential. It would provide a “diversified external manager” facility for Unilever schemes worldwide. Unilever’s Dutch ...
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Features
Word on the street
Secretary of state for work and pensions John Hutton said it was an “important milestone towards a lasting pensions settlement”. “Put quite simply, we can not go on as we are. But it is also vital that we get reform right for future generations, and we are determined to reach ...
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Towards a settlement
The media frenzy in the UK has moved on and now as the dust is starting to settle it will be up to pensions professionals and the government in the UK to fully absorb the recommendations of the Pensions Commission. There was a lot to take in - the final ...
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Features
Without a ripple
One of the largest pension funds for professionals in the Netherlands, the Doctors Pensions Fund Services (DPFS), recently outsourced the management of its assets from its in-house investment management team to external asset managers. The transfer which involved the movement of €11bn of DPFS assets, was probably the largest transition ...
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Features
The power of pooling resources
This article is from January 2006. While the multinational pooling concept has been around for over 50 years, interest in this global funding mechanism remains as strong as ever. Having gone through periods of reduced priority for multinationals during the 1990s, the recent focus on global governance and Sarbanes-Oxley legislation ...
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Features
The secret of our success
That dream has come true in less than a decade. The euro bond market has indeed grown in size and depth to an equivalent of the US market. Yet, in many respects that market is at present different and will keep in the future its own roots and peculiarities. The ...
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Features
Region of myths and misinformation
Many of us had hoped that the emergence in Europe of common accounting standards for pensions (IAS19 or FRS17 in the UK) would have made pension transaction work easier for both buyers and sellers. In some respects it has, establishing a common frame of reference to measure deficits (surplus seems ...
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Features
Telling it how it is
Client reporting has improved greatly in recent years. Fund managers now produce reports that are almost as slick as those of management consultants. Most pension trustees and officers seem to be happier with what they receive today compared with five or 10 years ago. Standards had to be raised. It ...
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Features
Only place to go to outperform
European investors often have a very strong domestic bias in their equity portfolios, allocating investment elsewhere to global mandates. While many global managers see the US market as a whole expensive and are accordingly underweight, this overall view is heavily influenced by the top 250 stocks which account for 70% ...
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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
What do funds have to lose?
The number of securities class action suits in American courts has been growing consistently, a fact that those foreign companies listed on US exchanges are well aware of. According to the Stanford University Securities Class Action Clearinghouse, there were 327 securities class action lawsuits filed in 2001, an increase of ...
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Features
Fee rises strain mutual loyalties
Is TIAA-CREF losing its soul? Certainly it’s losing some business and critics have started questioning the results of the ‘Merrillisation’ of this $360bn (e303bn) management company founded 87 years ago by philanthropist Andrew Carnegie as a non profit organisation to provide low-cost retirement plans and insurance for teachers and researchers ...
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Features
Unvarnished Farnish
The “good things” in Lord Turner’s report were welcomed by Christine Farnish, chief executive of the National Pensions Fund Association at the IPE MultiPensions conference in Amsterdam last month. “First of all he is saying the UK needs a simpler pension system. He is suggesting very fundamental reforms to the ...
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Features
Limited impact so far
When the former Chinese premier Zhou En-lai was asked about the effect of the French Revolution on the world, he is famously said to have quipped that it was too early to tell. His words come to mind when we think about the effect of the euro on equity markets. ...
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Features
New Europe shows potential
Central and east European asset management markets are currently among the fastest growing in Europe. The markets are skewed by the compulsory private pensions system, which distinguishes the region from the ‘old’ EU, but growth is most rapid in the investment fund market, albeit from a low base. According to ...