More comment – Page 37
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Opinion Pieces
Letter from the US: PE in the firing line
US public pension funds may play a role they would prefer to avoid in the 2016 presidential campaign as protagonists in the politically controversial private equity (PE) industry. Indeed, one of the reasons the Republican Mitt Romney lost the race to the White House was his connections to the sector.
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Features
Anders Fogh Rasmussen: Free speech and self-loathing
Anders Fogh Rasmussen, former secretary general of NATO and prime minister of Denmark, gave the opening address at IPE’s 2015 Conference. Speaking in the shadow of the terrorist attacks in Paris, his topic was A World in Flames: New Geopolitical Balances
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Opinion Pieces
Guest Viewpoint: Debbie Harrison & Dr David Black - Cass Business School
We predict that a revolution will take place in the UK life company sector over the next five years in terms of its involvement in private-sector pension provision
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Features
What we loosely term ‘hedge funds’
In the early years of the past decade, hedge fund managers dazzled pension funds and their advisers with promises of uncorrelated absolute returns
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Opinion Pieces
Letter from Brussels: Cross-border challenge for IORP II
IORP II may have cleared the European Parliament’s committee stage but amendments tabled to the second directive covering occupational pensions since 2003 are so radical that it would be unwise to forecast its future.
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Opinion Pieces
Letter from the US: Central States snag
A pensions bust-up is looming on the fringes of the 2016 Presidential campaign, involving the 115,500 retirees of the Central States Pension Fund (CSPF) who face a 28% average cut of their monthly pension. But the stakes are much larger. Senator Bernie Sanders, one of the Democratic presidential contenders, is championing the rights of those retirees. His attempt to stop the cuts with a new law could affect the whole pension industry.
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Features
Systemic challenges
Several asset managers and investors are raising concerns about liquidity in the public markets in 2016
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Opinion Pieces
Guest Viewpoint: Peter de Proft & Alexander Schindler - EFAMA
The Action Plan for a Capital Markets Union, recently published by the European Commission, is both ambitious and sensible
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Features
Pensions and shareholders
It is remarkable but perhaps unsurprising how little attention institutional investors pay to the governance of the pension funds of investee companies.
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Features
Resist the bubble temptation
It is a safe bet that another financial crisis will be along soon. No doubt that is not something that investment and pensions professionals want to dwell on but it needs to be faced.
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Features
Asset owners in Paris
Next month world leaders will gather in Paris to discuss the future of the planet. It might be a sweeping generalisation to view the UN Climate Change Conference as such a crucial event, but the summit marks the first time since 2009 that governments stand a chance of concluding a treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol.
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Opinion Pieces
Letter from Brussels: Focus on low returns
Dismally low returns on EU pension fund investments over 15 years? The allegation comes in a study by Better Finance, the European Federation of Investors & Financial Services Users. The report, Pensions Savings: The Real Return, points to excessive fees, points to other charges, and badly framed taxation rules, as the culprits.
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Opinion Pieces
Letter from the US: Lower expectations
Most US state retirement systems are cutting their investment return predictions. But this is still not enough, according to critics, and a minority of public pension funds are retaining optimistic assumptions and aggressive strategies.
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Opinion Pieces
Guest Viewpoint: Mark Fawcett - National Employment Savings Trust (UK)
It is early days for the UK’s new pension regime under which DC savers no longer have to buy an annuity. However, there are already lessons to be learned from the reforms.
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Features
Pulled in two directions
It is understandable that politicians covet institutional capital to help finance future economic growth
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Opinion Pieces
Letter from the US: From small beginnings
The US private retirement annuity market is quite small. But it is likely to grow dramatically thanks to the convergence of various factors
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Features
This is not a debt crisis
The widely held claim that the world is in the latter stages of a prolonged debt crisis should be challenged on more than one count
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Opinion PiecesLetter from Brussels: Pressure builds on tax havens
Brussels’ financial focus is on aggressive corporate tax planning and the related question of tax havens. This concerns the hedge fund ‘passport’ rights to do business across the EU and compliance of the offshore jurisdictions where they are domiciled to EU norms.
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Features
Long-term views required
For institutional investors with long-term time horizons, equities make a lot of sense, particularly when bond markets appear to be in a government induced bubble
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Opinion Pieces
Guest Viewpoint: Philip Neyt - Belgian Association of Pension Institutions
Notwithstanding further reforms, most EU member states have improved the efficiency and financial affordability of their first-pillar pension systems
