All articles by Fennell Betson – Page 21
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News
Membership of Irish pensions funds rises
IRELAND - The total number of pension schemes registered with the Pensions Board, the Irish regulatory body, rose by 19% in 2000 to 86,348, while the numbers covered by all schemes rose by 10% to 629,801...
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News
Regulation will hinder Pensionsfonds development
GERMANY – Heavy regulation and cumbersome legal structures are likely to stop Germany’s new Pensionfonds becoming “the instrument of choice” ...
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News
Lupus sets up KAG to penetrate German market
An independent KAG is being set up in Frankfurt by asset manager Lupus alpha to penetrate further the institutional market in Germany
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Features
Irish property trust finds streets paved with gold
If there was ever a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, it has been Irish property investment. This certainly has been the case for pension funds using the Irish Pension Fund Property Unit Trust, based in Dublin. This specialised vehicle was originally formed in 1967 to provide ...
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Features
Mefop chooses on performance
Make no mistake about it. The Italians are deadly serious about developing their pension funds, adopting the latest and best from outside, but only after a thorough and rigorous analysis as to what they need and how it can serve their needs. This message came through very clearly at the ...
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Features
Bringing life to Italy's post office
Erik Stattin is an unusual occupant of an executive’s chair in the traditional world of Italy’s postal service. But then Posteitaliane is less and less its traditional self with each mail delivery – witness its very successful life assurance operation Postevita, which he runs. Now pensions business is on his ...
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Features
Giant step into a new world
Last year, PGGM, the Netherlands’ second largest pension fund, took the revolutionary decision to invest in the commodities markets with a commitment of between 3% and 5% of its total portfolio value of about e50bn. This was no sudden move, but came after an extensive asset and liability management (ALM) ...
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Features
Cash positions
The investment in commodities using derivatives such as total return swaps and futures means the fund has to keep a cash position in order to prevent leverage. This cash position has to be equal in size to the total commodities exposure of the derivatives. On a monthly basis PGGM’s positions ...
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Features
Pensions that follow the members
They haven’t stopped running at the Novartis pension fund in Basle since the merger of the two chemical companies Sandoz and Ciba Geigy in 1995. Not only was there the merger of the two funds into one, but a string of divestitures of non-core businesses has continued, as part of ...
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Features
Pension reform can't wait
Now is the time to tackle pension reform, European industrialist Carlo de Benedetti told those attending the ‘Defusing Europe’s pensions timebomb’ conference organised by the Friends of Europe body in Brussels last month. “Unemployment in European countries is today mostly a supply problem rather than a demand one. In the ...
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Features
Irish managers regroup
The Irish government has opened the gates to asset managers and is about to press Ir£5bn(e6.3bn) into their hands some time this year. The legislation was passed before Christmas and the National Treasury Management Agency (NMTA) is to be the ringmaster of the exercise. Five commissioners are to be appointed ...
