Asset Allocation – Page 164
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Waiting to be discovered
When pension funds invest in traditional assets like equities and bonds they expose themselves to unintended sources of risk. The main sources unintentional risk are volatility and dividend yield for equities and credit spreads and liquidity for bonds. Once they detect these sources of risk most funds will either carry ...
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Fascinated by formulas
What was your first full-time job – and do you remember what you were paid at the time? In 1961 I took what I intended to be a job during a school holiday at what turned out to be an actuarial bureau. I was paid 375 gilders (€170) per month. ...
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Fiduciary move for the long haul
The Dutch pension industry has seen two ground breaking initiatives in the past 12 months, both involving US based asset managers. The first was the decision by the electronics firm Philips to hand the management of its pension fund to Merrill Lynch Investment Managers The second was the decision of ...
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Regional funds reach the parts
The recent pension reform, approved by the former Berlusconi government with law decree 252/05, permits Italian regions to set up ‘regional’ pension funds. This development seems quite unique in Europe: why should regions be empowered to set up their own pension funds? Under Italian law (law decree 124/93 reformed with ...
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Russia gets taste of market
Non-state (private) pension funds (NSPFs) consider September 1992 the birth date of the pension industry in Russia. At that time President Yeltsin signed a decree making it possible to set up the first funds. In legal terms they had to be socially oriented not-for-profit organisations. Then such a status was ...
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Global liquidity under threat?
Yield curve/duration An uncomfortable unease is permeating all asset classes across all markets. What will the Fed chairman Bernanke do next? Go for more tightening to show the markets that he too is as tough on inflation as his hugely respected predecessor? Or will he wait, giving the US economy ...
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Persuading the silent majority
The slow development of Italian pension funds is mainly due to the lack of resources to finance them. Neither the companies nor the employees have ‘serious money’ to put into the funds. Contributions made to the pension funds by companies and employees so far have been almost nominal (ie, a ...
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In a world of their own
Size matters when it comes to pension funds. The bigger the fund, the better value it can give scheme members, through economies of scale on the investment side. On the other hand, when a single pension fund has to cover an exceptionally broad geographical area, the costs can mount up. ...
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Kvaerner Pension Fund in E145m settlement
A dispute over the £1.2bn Kvaerner Pension Fund in the UK has been settled with a total payout of £101m (€145m) over six years from TH Global, the former Kvaerner Plc. “In return for payments totalling £101m, TH Global and its subsidiaries will no longer be associated with the Kvaerner ...
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Looking beyond the 3Ps
Investment managers will have their work cut out over the next year. If they want to keep abreast of market and regulatory developments they need to make significant changes to the systems and processes that support their businesses. Institutional clients have more expertise than ever before – and they are ...
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The challenges ahead
Setting up occupational pension schemes seems to be the future trend in Greek social security system. Until 2002, Greece was not familiar with the term “occupational pension scheme”, unlike other EU countries where supplementary provision already played a vital role in the social security system. In that context, the institution ...
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Busy doing not very much at all
When highlighting the merits of the profession of active manager, stock picking is often presented as the leading factor in the creation of value. After the downturn in the markets in 2000, benchmarked management was vilified in favour of investment management based on ‘convictions’ where small cap stocks, which had ...
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German association fears for corporate pensions
Boy-Jürgen Andresen, chairman of German occupational pensions association Aba, has warned that the further development of corporate pensions in Germany is in peril unless the government prolongs a social tax exemption for defined contribution schemes. The social tax exemption for the DC schemes, created by the Riester reforms of 2001, ...
