Latest from IPE Magazine – Page 260
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Asset Class Reports
High-yield Bonds & Loans: Low yields, high alpha
With spreads so tight, high-yield has become even more of a bottom-up stockpickers’ market than usual. Martin Steward looks for themes in the top-performing portfolios
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Special Report
Real Assets: The sting in the loan tail
Frédéric Blanc-Brude and Majid Hasan present a rigorous – yet implementable – framework for measuring the performance of private infrastructure debt
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Special Report
Real Assets: Learning from the crisis
European commercial real estate debt is a compelling investment opportunity. But Gareck Wilson warns that new entrants must consider the lessons learned during the recentdownturn, as they provide a valuable insight into the potential pitfalls
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Features
Risk – beyond the numbers
Risk can always be reduced to a set of numbers. But trustees play an important role both in setting the right risk objectives and in interpreting the signals, writes Gail Moss
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Features
We’ve been here before
It looks like the International Accounting Standards Board has IAS19 in its sights once more, reports Stephen Bouvier
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Features
Not quite a revolution
The introduction of a new accounting framework in the UK and Ireland could lead to much less upheaval in pensions accounting than some plan sponsors fear, discovers Stephen Bouvier
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Features
The ‘what’ and ‘why’ of costs
Controversies around pension funds’ asset management costs in various countries tell us something about the mood of the times, but they also suggest that changes are needed in the way pension boards select and justify their strategy choices to members and the wider world.
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Features
Divergence trades, depression trades
“It’s one of our big themes,” said Kathleen Hughes, head of European institutional sales at Goldman Sachs Asset Management, talking about central bank policy divergence over meet-the-press drinks in early September, four hours after European Central Bank president Mario Draghi had taken the deposit rate further into negative territory and announced plans to purchase covered bonds and asset-backed securities. The euro had a terrible day; Goldman Sachs had a pretty good one.
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Features
No rush for auto enrolment
As part of their commitment to turn around their economies, Spain and Portugal have tackled pension issues, both by reducing expenditure and by taking the first steps towards making retirement systems fairer and more efficient.
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Features
Pensions in the picture
Just three years after Europe’s pension fund representative bodies were successful in their proposal to create a separate occupational pensions stakeholder group within the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority (EIOPA) – under the previous CEIOPS committee of pension and insurance supervisors a single stakeholder group covered both sectors – there is now a proposal to merge the two stakeholder groups. Although this will have to be ratified by the European Parliament, here are a few points that might help those involved understand why this issue really matters.
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Features
The high stakes of stakeholder group reform
Changes to the governance and funding structure of the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority (EIOPA) now seem inevitable, after it was adopted as one of the core policies for new European commissioner Jonathan Hill.
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Features
The UK regulator has got its teeth back
Champagne corks were popping back in August near the UK’s south coast when Brighton-based UK Pensions Regulator (TPR) ended a six-year legal battle with the insolvent Lehman Brothers.
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Opinion Pieces
Crony capitalism
The public gets it. Academics and financial analysts get it. In fact, many experts say it is the most important governance and democracy issue of our time. So why do investors have so little to say about political donations and the corporate capture of politics?
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Opinion Pieces
Woody at work
Woody is the villain of the new book The US Pension Crisis – What We Need to Do Now to Save America’s Pensions, by Ronald Ryan. According to Ryan, Woody is the “pension pencil” or “the weapon of mass destruction in financial America”, used since the 1990s for accounting gimmicks that conceal the real financial situation of pension funds.
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Opinion Pieces
A stinging rebuke
The private pension product sector is “persistently the worst-performing retail services market of all throughout the European Union”, according to the European Commission, as cited in a new report.
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Opinion Pieces
“Governance can serve as a stimulus to improve and nurture pension organisations”
Once a year, the US professional basketball league organises its all-star competition. Players from teams across the country are selected as the best in their respective positions. Could we have an all-star pension industry, uniting the best standards and practices under one roof?
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Asset Class Reports
Time for some caution with this asset class
How do you invest in high-yield bonds and loans?
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Features
Avoiding the trap
The decision by the IFRS interpretations committee to re-examine its asset-ceiling guidance should serve to focus minds once again on how defined-benefit plan sponsors can address the danger of a trapped surplus. Stephen Bouvier explores the issues with two experts from Aon Hewitt’s UK practices
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Features
How we run our money - Prudent and dynamic
Miguel Branco, deputy director of Banco de Portugal pension fund, tells Carlo Svaluto Moreolo about his fund’s investment and risk strategy
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Asset Class Reports
Dangerous liquidity
Following another summer of high-yield bond market volatility, Emma Cusworth asks whether ETFs are to blame for credit markets getting riskier
