All articles by David White – Page 26
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News
France plans supplementary scheme for 2003
FRANCE- France’s new prime minister, Jean-Pierre Raffarin, has revealed the long-awaited plans for the country’s first supplementary pension plan.
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News
Swedish fund fires Nordea, Handelsbanken and SEB
SWEDEN- The Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research, one of Sweden’s largest charitable foundations, is sacking the leading Swedish banks that handle the bulk of its E1bn portfolio. It says it intends to replace them with three smaller ‘boutique’ asset managers.
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News
Putnam buys UK high yield manager New Flag
US/UK- US global money manager Putnam Investments, has bought New Flag, a UK niche asset manager specialising in high yield bonds. Boston-based Putnam, which handles $300bn of assets worldwide, already manages high yield assets worth $11bn in the US.
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Features
Giving mobile workers pension wheels
Promoting labour mobility within Europe is one of the central aims of the EU. Yet one large obstacle to this is the portability of supplementary pension rights. A European Commission directive, adopted in 1998, was intended to give supplementary pension rights the same sort of protection as basic pension rights. ...
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Features
Filling in the gap
The growth of third pillar defined contribution schemes in France has been hampered, historically, by the generosity of the country’s first and second pillar pension systems. The combination of a high level of social security pension and the complementary ‘repartition’ (pay-as-you-go) schemes of ARRCO and AGIRC – mandatory for all ...
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Features
Waiting for better plans to emerge
The current move by some of the largest French companies to introduce Article 83 defined contribution plans for their employees suggests that they are not prepared to wait for a new pensions law and the products it will bring. PSA Peugeot Citröen is only the latest of a number of ...
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Features
Drive to improve benefits
PSA Peugeot Citröen, France’s leading car manufacturer, is introducing an Article 83 defined contribution pension plan this month in a move designed to raise the retirement benefits of its employees. The plan will cover all employees of the PSA group’s French automobile, logistics and transportation businesses whose earnings are above ...
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Features
All embracing approach to protection
PRO BTP is an organisation created by the French construction industry for the French construction industry. Its job is to run the complementary system of social protection, insurance and pensions for more than three million people who belong to the BTP – ‘batiments et travaux publics’. The organisation was set ...
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Features
Immunising the pensions at risk
In the face of market volatility and accounting standards, notably FRS17, pensions funds are showing increasing interest in ‘immunising’ their portfolios from the series of risks that they face – principally interest risk, inflation risk and market risk The most publicised example of this, so far, has been the decision ...
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Features
'IKEA of pensions insurance'
The pension insurance society for Sweden’s central government employees, commonly known as Kåpan, is currently at the centre of a switch from DB to DC systems. Kåpan, whose official name is FSO, was started 10 years ago to provide pension insurance for 220,000 members of three leading trade unions. In ...
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Features
Why everyone wins with z-scores
The publication of the first performance test of the Dutch industrywide funds has put the spotlight on the Netherlands’ unique system of pension fund rating – known as the z-score. The test is an assessment of how funds have measured up to their investment strategies in the years since the ...
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Features
Swedes mass migrate to DC
The transformation of the Swedish pension system since the mid 1990s is perhaps the most comprehensive endorsement of the defined contribution (DC) scheme in Europe. More than two million people have been moved into second pillar contribution-based plans in the space of five or six years. The first pillar has ...
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Features
Upsetting the apple cart
Defined contribution (DC) is poised to make a clean sweep of collectively agreed nationwide pension schemes in Sweden. One after the other, these schemes have become contribution-based. In 1996 the plan for blue collar workers in the private sector was changed from a defined benefit (DB) to DC scheme, known ...
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News
Danes will adopt Spain's two-tier approach
PORTUGAL- The Spanish presidency compromise proposal on the sensitive issue of quantitative restrictions within the EU occupational pensions directive may be adopted by the Danish presidency.
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News
New Swedish government fund angers employers
SWEDEN- A new collectively-agreed supplementary pension scheme for 220,000 central government workers in Sweden has angered employers, who fear it will encourage private sector employees to press for higher employers’ contributions to their own schemes.
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Features
Whether to take it or leave it
If the current low interest rate, low growth environment persists across Europe the question of annuities is likely become contentious. The value of annuities – which is linked to the performance of bonds – has fallen with interest rates. As defined contribution (DC) pension plans mature, people are discovering that ...
