All articles by Maria Teresa Cometto – Page 13
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Features
How to shrink the liabilities
US pension fund sponsors can breathe with relief after the Pension Funding Equity Act of 2004 was signed by the president George W Bush in April. According to the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (the quasi-federal agency that insures pension plans) the new law will save them $80bn (e117.8bn) in contributions ...
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Features
'Pay to play' charge hits consultants
Is the pension fund consulting business afflicted by conflicts of interest even more so than the analyst-investment banker incestuous relationship? The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is looking for an answer to this disturbing question: that is why last December it opened a “fact-finding mission”, a broad examination of the ...
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Features
Pensions wait in West Wing
Alan Greenspan is not just the Federal Reserve chairman. He’s become a Washington wise man whose influence extends far beyond monetary policy. So it took his congressional testimony at the end of February to remind all American politicians that social security urgently needs to be fixed. Up to that point, ...
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Features
Re-engineering of plans under way
How is it possible to cut pension costs yet at the same time to remain attractive to employees? This is the conundrum faced by American employers. There is no ‘sure’ answer. What is certain is that the great majority of US pension fund sponsors are changing their benefit strategy. According ...
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Features
Next on the US chopping block?
The investment consulting business in the US is very concentrated, with the leading firms controlling 70% of the market. But this situation is slowly changing, because of the increasing competition coming from new entrants and because of the recent mutual fund scandal’s ripple effects. “The top 20 leading consulting firms ...
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Special Report
Accounting rules to hit corporates
It was supposed to be a step forward more transparency in pension fund accounting. Still it is raising more quarrels about what transparency really means and what is the right balance between disclosure to investors and a company’s need to keep costs under control. The new rules issued by the ...
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Features
Turning the tanker around
For the first time it has opened a storefront office encouraging walk-in traffic. It is offering more comprehensive and personalised financial advice. It is dramatically cutting expenses, laying off 8% or 500 of its 6,500 employees. In other words, the 85-year old Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association College Retirement Equities ...
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Features
Fixing pension deficits
Is the worst over? The sky over American pension funds looks a bit less cloudy, after some good news arrived both from Wall Street and from the bond market. Analysts at Merrill Lynch even calculate that the huge deficit hanging over DB pension plans – as big as $300bn (e266bn) ...
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News
Fitch sees recruitment risks at State Street
GLOBAL – Ratings agency Fitch has downgraded State Street Corp., saying there are potential problems with hiring and training new staff while integrating the Global Securities Services acquisition.
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Features
Wall Street fall out
American pension funds will not get a penny of the $399m accused restitution fund paid by 10 of the biggest Wall Street firms found ‘guilty’ of conflicts of interest. In fact the settlement between them and the US government, following New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer’s investigation, should benefit ...
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Features
Modified cash balance
B y mid-March 2003 a huge battle can burst out in the American workplace, involving up to 42m employees, who are still enrolled in traditional defined benefit (DB) pension plans. At stake is the conversion of these plans into the so-called ‘cash balance’ retirement schemes, which was halted in September ...
