All articles by David White – Page 17
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Features
UCITS III options for institutions
The arrival of UCITS III has provide some investment houses with the opportunity they have been looking for to package their funds for the European institutional market. Payden & Rygel Global, a UK based global fixed income specialist, has amalgamated its range of eight offshore bond funds into a single ...
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Features
Swaps 'ideal for pension funds'
Derivatives can enable pension funds to re-shape their asset returns. They can guarantee an upside and protect the downside. Crucially they provide a closer match than bonds to a mature pension fund’s liabilities. The use of derivatives by pension was one of the key themes at Watson Wyatt’s 11th annual ...
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Features
Waving the flag for funding
The idea for a pension fund for members of the European Parliament began on a paper tablecloth in an Athens restaurant. It was sketched by Richard Balfe and a fellow member of the European Parliament (MEP) Anthony Simpson. They felt that MEPs fared worse than their national parliamentary counterparts in ...
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Features
Restoring investor confidence
This month’s Off The Record focuses on financial scandals and asks whether the succession of Enron-type scandals over the past few years has damaged public confidence in the financial system. How serious is the damage, and how much trust has been lost? A recent Harris poll found that 90% of ...
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Features
'Pension funds better investors than asset managers'
European pension funds should manage the core of their business internally, and outsource only the specialist areas of asset management to external managers. This is because pension funds understand their liabilities better than anyone else. Broadly, this was the conclusion of six managers in the pension industry when they debated ...
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Features
Getting the pensions message across
Good communication is essential in the pension fund business, according to a panel of leading figures in the European pensions industry. Panellists at the third annual IPE Awards in Amsterdam agreed that communication with plan members was an important part of the job of a pension fund manager. And with ...
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Features
US to dictate Europe's 2004
Two developments in the US hold the key to how the Euro-zone equities market is likely to perform in 2004. One is the recovery of the US economy and the other is depreciation of the US dollar. The questions the European markets are asking are – will the fall in ...
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News
Swiss funds cut reserves too far - survey
Swiss institutional investors are holding fluctuation reserves of only 3% of their assets compared with 16% three years ago, according to a survey. Only 10% of institutional investors, which include pension funds and foundations, have fluctuation reserves of more than 10%.
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News
Merrill finds fund managers’ outlook brighter
World equity markets will be higher in 12 months time, fund managers believe, buoyed up by global reflation.
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News
UK public pension numbers up and private down
The number of people in second tier pensions in the UK has risen in almost every year for the past 20 years, according figures from the Department of Work and Pensions. But private pension scheme membership has seen a dramatic fall.
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News
20% of Swiss schemes underfunded
One in five pension funds in the Swiss second pillar were underfunded in 2002, according to figures from the Swiss government.
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News
Corporation of London PF tenders six new mandates
The Corporation of London Pension Fund is tendering six mandates of up to £130m each in bonds, equities and cash, following a major revision of its investment strategy.
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News
Douse departs from Watson Wyatt
Susan Douse, who ran Watson Wyatt’s Global Asset Study for the past 10 years, is moving to Schroders.
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Features
What happens when the money runs out?
This month’s Off the Record looks at the ticklish issue of solvency insurance for company pension plans in Europe – how to protect members of corporate pension plans when companies go bust. A number of European countries already operate solvency insurance schemes for corporate pensions. In Germany, and now in ...
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News
Funds should manage core internally - IPE panel
NETHERLANDS - European pension funds should manage the core of their business internally, and outsource only the specialist areas of asset management to external managers.
