All articles by Liam Kennedy – Page 2
-
InterviewsFiera Capital: Montreal’s succession story
If Fiera Capital were a retail store it might need a big shop window. It is perhaps better known in the institutional world outside Canada for strategies like real assets but Fiera is a full-service asset manager that is also a big deal in its home town of Montreal.
-
Opinion PiecesIreland – future pensions tiger
Ireland stands a few policy steps away from the creation of a serious first and second-pillar pensions architecture that will improve the country’s international standing in terms of retirement provision.
-
Opinion PiecesDoes the UK really need to consolidate thousands of DB schemes?
The UK’s so-called Mansion House Reforms are under way. This cluster of policies takes its name from the residence of the Lord Mayor of the City of London, which is the venue for a regular set-piece policy speech by British chancellors of the exchequer, the latest of whom is Jeremy Hunt.
-
AnalysisUK pension industry reacts to government’s ambitious Mansion House Reform agenda
September saw the close of key pension reform consultations. Pamela Kokoszka and Liam Kennedy assess the proposals and some of the responses
-
Opinion PiecesEurope escaped the Great Retirement Boom but watch out for the crunch
Continental Europe appears to have largely escaped the trend known in the US as the ‘Great Retirement Boom’, where an economically comfortable cohort of 50 to 64-year-olds has retreated from work in the post-COVID period.
-
Special ReportTop 1000 Pension Funds 2023: Europe’s pensions absorb a €646bn loss
Last year saw a net reduction in the asset stock of European pension investment retirement pools of 6.77% over the previous year, according to IPE’s annual study of the leading 1,000 pension funds across the continent, marking a sea change for pensions.
-
Opinion PiecesCapital competition: where does it leave sustainability goals?
For pension funds and other similar large institutional pools of capital, there is significant pressure from politicians to invest in politically favoured domestic sectors – like renewables or high-growth sectors like venture capital.
-
Special ReportIPE Top 500 Asset Managers 2023: Asset management at a pivotal point
Data highlights from IPE Top 500 Asset Managers 2023: 2022 global asset management AUM is €102.6trn | 5.5% reduction on the 2022 total of €108.6trn | Global institutional AUM: €35.1trn | European institutional assets: €11.5trn
-
InterviewsVontobel: Builders in a changing landscape
Christel Rendu de Lint, a veteran of Swiss asset and wealth management, sees herself as a builder. This claim has justification given her track record at UBP, where she built a fixed-income capability from scratch to CHF20bn (€20.5bn) over 12 years.
-
Opinion PiecesBetter the equity market devil you know?
Being a large equity investor in a relatively small domestic market can have advantages as well as drawbacks. Proximity to the market and its infrastructure, good knowledge of corporates and corporate leaders, and the ability to exercise strong influence as an owner, potentially a stable long-term one, all count among the advantages. The need to avoid concentration – in terms of position, sizing and overall allocations – and idiosyncratic sector exposure are among the challenges.
-
NewsNew PPF proposals would represent ‘seismic changes’ to UK pensions landscape
Plans would mean ‘struggling’ DB schemes could choose to opt-in to the Pension Protection Fund
-
Opinion PiecesLDI lessons: be wary of future traps
After the global financial crisis of 2008-09, world leaders meeting at the Pittsburgh G20 summit mandated central clearing for derivatives. This was to allow for greater supervisory oversight and to mitigate against the unintended build-up of risks of the kind that almost toppled the financial system in the guise of over-the-counter credit default swaps.
-
Opinion PiecesBanking crisis delivers a lesson on equity strategy
We may never know the precise reasons why the in-house equity team of Alecta, the €105bn Swedish pension scheme, chose to invest in excess of €1bn in risky US banks including Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), much of which has now been written off.
-
Special ReportSpecial Report – Natural capital
Incorporating nature risk into financial analysis remains the - for now elusive - goal for investors, but this is hard given the lack of consensus on what information should be collected and how it should be presented. Such questions are the domain of the Taskforce for Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD), the group founded in 2021. As well as striving for transparency and consistency in data disclosure, asset owners are also keen to deter inflated and exaggerated claims by asset managers on biodiversity impacts.
-
Opinion PiecesMight Ukraine’s distressed assets one day look attractive to pension funds?
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 has tested Europe’s political and economic resolve. But where Vladimir Putin attempted to sow discord, he instead has failed to divide the West.
-
Country ReportCountry Report – Pensions in Germany (March 2023)
Angela Merkel’s governments largely dodged the political hot potato of first-pillar pension reform, which means the current overhaul to the state system is overdue. But it barely gets to grips with the issues. For one, it does not deal with entitlements or increase the retirement age; second it introduces a funded component that will probably only take effect in the 2030s, when the post-war demographic peak is passing.
-
Opinion PiecesGermany's first-pillar pension reform plans: tough to meet expectations
How would you design your asset allocation if you were building a portfolio from scratch? This is the question facing the governors of Germany’s new state pension buffer fund, the grandly titled ‘Generationenkapital’ (Generational Capital) fund. The expectations are high.
-
Country ReportCountry Report – Ireland (February 2023)
Ireland is preparing an Auto Enrolment Bill, which will kick-start the process of defined contribution pension reform in earnest, some 15 years after the concept was first mooted. The plan is for a Central Processing Authority to administer the system and for up to four providers to tender for a chance to manage member contributions.
-
NewsSmart beta pioneer reignites debate on factor timing
Research Affiliates founder Rob Arnott finds ‘most factors look very cheap’ in a new paper highlighting the attractiveness of many equity factor strategies
-
Opinion PiecesPeople power: a hidden strength of public pension funds
Public and sovereign pension funds face a unique set of challenges, sometimes related to resource constraints and often to the glare of open scrutiny.
