All articles by Maria Teresa Cometto – Page 11
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Features
'Toxic waste' in pension funds
Are American pension funds affected by the sub prime mortgage crisis? And how deeply? A definite answer may come only in a few months. In the meantime there is a lot of denial together with suspicion and fear. For sure, investment banks have been offering RMBS (Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities), CDOs ...
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Features
Open funds open wider
Reform of open pension funds is liberalising the domestic market. Maria Teresa Cometto spoke with Intesa Previdenza, the largest such fund in Italy
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Features
Survival of the fittest
Maria Teresa Cometto looks at how Cometa, Italy’s largest and second oldest closed penion fund, is staving off competition from banks and insurance companies
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Features
130/30 strategies: the US perspective
Globally more than $50bn (€37.3bn) may be now invested in 130/30 strategies with several different managers, according to a recent Merrill Lynch report. Those managers include Barclays Global Investors, Goldman Sachs AM, ING IM and UBS Global AM, according to Merrill Lynch’. “It’s not a fad, this is real and ...
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Features
US pension funds on private equity roll
What might US pension funds reply to Britain’s Trades Union Congress (TUC) about the dangers of private equity? Ahead of June’s G8 summit, the TUC’s general secretary, Brendan Barber, is going to ask pension funds from other countries to rethink their investment policy and stop fuelling buyout fever. Barber said ...
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Features
Switch to DC set to continue
More politics for state pension funds, more cuts for corporate defined benefit (DB) plans. This is year 2007 in a nutshell for the US retirement industry. With only one year away from the 2008 presidential election and a bullish Wall Street helping assets’ growth, state retirement systems feel less the ...
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Features
Post-election pension blues
US pension fund industry players are bracing for the new Democratic Congress. Their lobbyists and attorneys had hoped to obtain some industry-friendly amendments to the new Pension Protection Act, signed last August by President George W Bush. But with the new Democratic majority in both the House and the Senate ...
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Features
Bleak future for Taft-Hartley plans
Last May the FBI spent almost $250,000 (€197,000) digging for the remains of Teamsters leader Jimmy Hoffa, who disappeared in 1975 a few miles from Detroit, Michigan. Many members of the union that used to be led by Hoffa and is now managed by his son James would have preferred ...
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Features
Marè’s advice: hold your course
Italy is on the brink of dramatic changes to its pension fund market. Either the Maroni reform goes on and pension funds grow strongly, or the industry will face a new paralysis that will be detrimental to future retirees. A third way, which is going back to a very generous ...
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Features
Pensions disarray on Capitol Hill
It is spring, but it already feels like November when US Congressional elections will take place. The political fall wind is already freezing any attempt to approve unpopular or controversial legislation. That explains why the US Congress left for its two-week Easter recess without approving a new pension legislation, which ...
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Features
Positive currents in DC market
More retirement savings, easier investment choices, lower management fees. A worker’s dream? No it is not, according to recent research about new trends in US defined contribution (DC) plans. Thanks to regulatory and market pressures, in 2006 DC plans, like 401(k)s, will conquer more participants and will be more understandable. ...
