All articles by Liam Kennedy – Page 3
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Special ReportSpecial Report – DC pensions
Workplace pensions can differentiate themselves by their stewardship and engagement programmes. But effective stewardship is generally the preserve of larger defined benefit players and big investment managers. Now, technology means investors in smaller pooled funds can express their proxy voting preferences, shifting the power away from the managers and towards asset owners.
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InterviewsNewton’s Euan Munro: Seeking the best of both worlds
Euan Munro has built a formidable reputation in asset management, developing a major multi-asset absolute return strategy at Standard Life Asset Management in the 2000s. But the fortunes of his once mighty Global Absolute Return Strategy (GARS), now managed by Abrdn, have wavered as multi-asset strategies have fallen out of favour.
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Asset Class ReportsAsset class report – Fixed income
Last year was the worst in recent decades for both government bonds and credit, with portfolio returns worse than most professionals have experienced in their careers. But is the tide finally shifting as inflation starts to moderate and terminal policy rates are in sight? In any case, geopolitical risks and inflation are not set to go away, and recession will inevitably take a toll on corporate issuers.
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Country ReportCountry Report – Pensions in Central & Eastern Europe (January 2023)
Poland’s PPK auto-enrolment system marks its fourth anniversary this month. It can hardly be described as a complete success given the participation rate is stuck at just over a third of the working population. Some initial projections foresaw a 70% takeup level. But with assets approaching €2.5bn and rapidly growing, there is a sense that this is a relatively good outcome for a country with no tradition of independent retirement saving and where the previous second pillar system was radically overhauled just a few years ago, leaving ordinary citizens confused and mistrustful.
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Opinion PiecesTime to rethink defined contribution pensions design
This year is shaping up to be the worst for investment returns since before the great financial crisis, according to IPE’s latest performance analysis of the leading European pension funds.
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Country ReportNordic region: Danish pension funds on track to fund climate commitments
Denmark’s pension industry is calling for greater clarity from government on the timing of green projects and on the roles of different stakeholders
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Asset Class ReportsAsset class report – Equities
Factor investment strategies were once the ‘new black’ - scientific, quant driven approaches that could deliver the ‘smart beta’ nirvana of lower volatility returns and optimised exposure to robust return premia from small cap, value and quality stocks. Pundits always warned adopters that not all factors would perform all of the time - and indeed they didn’t. But investors are taking a fresh look at factor strategies now the extended spell of outperformance of growth stocks has passed, and value has reasserted itself.
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Country ReportCountry Report – Pensions in the Nordic Region (December 2022)
Nordic pension funds are getting to grips with biodiversity and natural capital in their investment portfolios, seeking to measure both the impact of companies they invest in and ways they can limit adverse effects on nature. Like other investors globally, many are just at the early stages of thinking about this - how they measure biodiversity, which metrics and approaches are gaining acceptance, and how best to report to stakeholders.
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Special ReportSpecial Report – ESG
Our report looks at the ESG through the prism of private markets, with coverage of SFDR and an interview with Anner Follèr, head of sustainability at Sweden’s national private equity investor AP6
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Opinion PiecesLessons on LDI: learn from the Dutch cultural revolution
Around 20 years ago, UK occupational pension liabilities underwent a structural change. With assets weighted towards UK equities, still cashflow positive and open to new members and future accrual, liabilities were not too greatly discussed.
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Country ReportCountry Report – Pensions in Switzerland (November 2022)
Our report on Swiss pensions also looks at the growing demand for so-called 1e plans, additional pension vehicles for higher earners. The 1e sector is ripe for consolidation, like the market for multi-employer pensions (Anlagestiftungen), where the federal regulator is concerned about a build-up of complexity and supervisory risks. We also cover the annual survey of the consultancy Complemeta and assess Swiss pension funds’ asset allocation plans.
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Country ReportCountry Report – Pensions in Spain & Portugal (November 2022)
In Spain, the pension sector is giving a cautious thumbs up to workplace pension reform plans, even if they fall short of the industry’s wish list. Top of that list was mandatory auto-enrolment, which won’t now happen. But the planned national so-called Macro-fondo ‘super fund’ has met with general approval. It will be managed by the private sector but supervised by a control committee comprising government, employer and union representatives.
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Features17Capital’s Pierre-Antoine de Selancy: Navigating NAV lending
Pierre-Antoine de Selancy has just left a meeting with his company’s new majority shareholder, Oaktree, and is running a little late. His days are busy. De Selancy is founder and managing partner of 17Capital, a London-based boutique specialised in providing NAV finance to private equity managers.
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Opinion PiecesSolvency II: Rule changes can’t force risk taking
Changing the rules can often seem like a very sensible policy choice – whether a sweeping deregulatory reform or more of a technocratic adjustment to regulations.
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FeaturesLGIM’s Michelle Scrimgeour: ambitions for growth
Michelle Scrimgeour and her executive team set out their strategic growth priorities in November 2020, a little more than a year after she had taken over as CEO of Legal & General Investment Management (LGIM). They agreed to grow the business by focusing on existing strengths: to modernise, diversify and to internationalise.
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NewsBank of England intervention eases pressure on DB schemes facing margin calls
Pension funds should proactively look for ways to shore up liquidity, says consultancy
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Opinion PiecesInstitutional capital for energy resilience
Ukraine’s independence day on 24 August also marked six months since the start of Russia’s invasion and with it a profound shift in the global geopolitical and economic balance.
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FeaturesCEE private equity: in search of capital
War in Ukraine is just one factor deterring investment in private equity and growth capital in Central and Eastern Europe
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Special Report
Belgium: Limited agreement on pension changes reached
A minimum monthly first-pillar pension will apply from 2024 but there has been little effort to boost supplementary schemes
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Special ReportTop 1000 Pension Funds 2022: Pension assets increase reflects 2021’s markets
The assets of the leading 1000 European pension funds increased by well over €600bn in our latest survey – a large portion of which can be attributed to strong investment returns on the back of a sustained post-COVID rebound over the course of 2021. Developed market equities returned over 30% in euro terms in 2021, compared with losses of around 4.7% in global aggregate bonds.
