All articles by David White – Page 24
-
Features
Time to pay more for pensions
Occupational pension schemes are currently being buffeted by storms in the equity markets. In particular, companies providing defined benefit (DB) pensions, who enjoyed pension contribution holidays when stock markets were booming, are now faced with shortfalls in their pension fund assets. In the Netherlands, pensioners have set up lobby groups ...
-
Features
Time for 'the negative option'
Italy has staked the future of its fledgling second pillar pension system on defined contribution (DC) schemes. The legal framework for the system was set up as part of the pension reforms of two former prime ministers Giuliano Amato in 1993 and Lamberto Dini in 1995. However, it has been ...
-
Features
Turning down the volume
Pension funds and their consultants are wary of hedge funds, largely because they cannot pigeonhole them into any of the traditional asset classes, and therefore find them difficult to benchmark. As a result, they have tended to approach them through the multi-manager route, rather than directly. By apportioning a mandate ...
-
Features
Covip lays down the law
Much of the future of Italy’s new complementary DC plans lies in the hands of the Commissione Vigilanza sui Fondi Pensione (Covip), which was set up to regulate them. Covip has been severely criticised by pension funds for what they see as the excessive bureaucracy of the approval process. It ...
-
Features
Benign Belgian flexibility
Market volatility has not precipitated any sharp changes of direction among Belgian pension funds, according to Hervé Noël the head of portfolio management at Tractebel Pension Funds in Brussels. Furthermore, the regulator, the Office de Controle des Assurances/Controledienst voor Verzekeringen (OCA/CDV) is using a light hand on the tiller. “Until ...
-
Features
Out of one comparto and into another
One sign that the new occupational DC plans in Italy are shifting into a higher gear is the beginning of a move from monocomparto schemes, which offer members a single line of investment – usually a balanced portfolio – to multicomparto schemes that offer a choice of investments. Investment choice ...
-
News
FEATURE: Hervé Noël on Belgian pension funds
Market volatility has not precipitated any sharp changes of direction among Belgian pension funds, according to Hervé Noël the head of portfolio management at Tractebel Pension Funds in Brussels. Furthermore the regulator, the Office de Contrôle des Assurances/Controledienst voor Verzekeringen (OCA/CDV) is using a light hand on the tiller.
-
News
FEATURE: Olivier Deprez on Switzerland's 'crisis'
Switzerland got its first inkling of a pensions crisis earlier this year when the government announced that it planned to lower the minimum guaranteed interest rate paid on occupational pensions schemes from 4% to 3%.
-
News
Mediolanum State Street venture to split up
ITALY/US/UK - Mediolanum State Street, the highly successful joint venture of the London arm of US investment manager State Street Global Advisors (SSgA) and the Milan-based Mediolanum bank is breaking up. The two entities have decided to go their own way.
-
News
BP says European fund would save it E40m annually
UK- Oil giant BP estimates that it could benefit by up to E40m annually if it was able to introduce pan-European pensions for its 40,000 multinational workforce.
-
News
SFF cuts SEB and Nordea mandates
SWEDEN- The Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research (SFF) has stripped Sweden’s two leading Swedish banks of the greater part of their mandates and handed it to three other managers in a drive to get better returns on its investments.
-
Features
Ring-fencing DB schemes
One open question in the Irish defined contribution (DC) market is the impact of the Personal Saving Retirement Account (PRSA). PRSA are a contract-based DC pension product. They bear a strong similarity to the UK’s stakeholder pension in that it is to extend pensions provision to people who, so far, ...
-
Features
Momentum for change gathers pace
The development of defined contribution (DC) pension plans in Ireland shows many similarities with the current situation in the UK, with companies switching from defined benefit (DB) to DC plans to remove pension fund risk from their balance sheets. Certainly the pressure on companies in Ireland to close off DB ...
-
Features
Looking for some breathing space
Pension funds are quite different from other institutional investors because of their long term liabilities. This was the robust and unequivocal response from readers to this months survey. This may seem a statement of the obvious, but increasingly, regulator and accounting bodies appear to want to squeeze pension funds into ...
-
Features
DC benefits both sides
Banks and financial institutions have been in the vanguard of the move to DC pension plans in Ireland. AIB Group closed its DB scheme to new entrants at the end of 1997 and launched a DC scheme in 1998. The DC scheme now has almost 5,000 active members in Ireland ...
