Latest from IPE Magazine – Page 268
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Special ReportTop 400: Innovating in a world where winner takes all
A person who moves a mountain starts by taking away a small stone, according to a Chinese saying. This applies to the asset management industry today, say Amin Rajan and Kevin Pleiter
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Special ReportTop 400: Managers pursue rationalisation
Alastair Sewell and Erwin van Lumich believe that recent transactions are unlikely to herald widespread M&A among European asset managers but that rationalisation will continue
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Special ReportTop 400: Finance and regulation
Nitin Mehta believes professional bodies and well-run self-regulatory organisations can help buffer the sometimes competing priorities of regulators and the financial industry
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Special ReportTop 400: The burden of harmony
MIFID II and other European regulations are not as consistent as they seem, says Mike Ginnelly
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Special ReportTop 400: Are we doing this right? Are we doing this well?
Catherine Doherty looks at the mechanical and cultural work that investment managers are doing to improve their own businesses
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Country Report
Switzerland: A home game
An emphasis on domestic investments has left Swiss Pensionskassen with relatively stable returns. Jonathan Williams asks if there are opportunities outside traditional domestic fixed income, equity and real estate
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Opinion Pieces
TIAA-CREF expands
Six years after taking the helm as president and CEO of the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association – College Retirement Equities Fund (TIAA-CREF), Roger Ferguson announced the acquisition of Nuveen Investments in April for $6.25bn (€4.5bn), including debt.
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Interviews
An artisan with solutions
Where one still finds asset managers attached to banks, the former tend to be junior partners. Not so at William Blair, whose founder always had an ambition both to finance and invest in small growth companies from day one in 1935.
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Features
Another eventful summer
The Spanish Treasury joined the UK, Germany, France and Italy as the fifth European sovereign to issue inflation-linked bonds on 13 May, raising €5bn for 10-year paper that was four times oversubscribed.
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Features
Put the trust back
Being outside the EU doesn’t mean you escape regulation. Swiss pension funds are complaining about excessive regulation – in this case, the burden is homemade and only to some extent fuelled by the financial crisis.
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Features
Falling (further) behind
“Pensions are safe”, Germany’s one-time pensions minister, Norbert Blüm, famously said in the 1990s. That ill-judged statement still influences discussions about the German state pension system even today.
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Features
Scania and the benefits of independence
Volkswagen’s bid for heavy vehicle manufacturer Scania has divided Swedish institutional investors, with the division no more apparent than among its buffer funds.
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Features
Nudging its way to reform
Nearly two years after the German pension association aba threw its weight behind the introduction of auto-enrolment, little has happened to increase the coverage of the second pillar.
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Features
Ongoing FTK delay annoys pensions sector
Tensions are rising in the Dutch pensions sector. Every day that details for the new financial assessment framework (FTK) fail to appear – let alone pass Parliament – pension funds, providers, advisers and asset managers must anxiously weigh their options.
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Features
Carrot or stick: the shift to passive
Earlier this year, the UK pension and asset management industries watched as the government revealed its vision for the 89 Local Government Pension Schemes (LGPS) in England and Wales.
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Features
Pressure on, pressure off
The 22 July deadline for implementation of the Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive (AIFMD) is looming. As with other EU financial legislation, AIFMD will be enforced via national regulators and with varying approaches, so this will not be consistent across EU member states.
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Features
Triumph of hope over experience
Book review: Money Mania: Booms, Panics and Busts from Ancient Rome to the Great Meltdown, Bob Swarup (Bloomsbury, £20)
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Opinion Pieces
M&A medicine
The debate about Pfizer’s proposed takeover of the UK’s AstraZeneca – which should have resolved itself by the time you read this – reminds us that there are some big unanswered questions relating to institutional investors and M&A activity.
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Opinion Pieces
Lighting dark corners
The European Commission’s planned revisions to rules on shareholder rights aim to encourage a culture of long-term equity investment across the EU.
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Opinion Pieces
Bart Heenk, Managing director, Avida International
“A balanced scorecard enables trustees to monitor, assess and improve outsourced services”
