More comment – Page 43
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Opinion Pieces
ESG lacks something
No, I haven’t had a damascene conversion to become an ESG critic. Rather, my argument is that the ESG (environment, social and governance) community needs to add another ‘E’, for economics.
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Opinion Pieces
Towards a 29th regime
A single-market regime for third-pillar pensions has moved closer with a paper entitled Towards an EU-Single Market for Personal Pensions from the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority (EIOPA).
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Features
A model but no debate
One of the most outspoken critics of pensions accounting and the IASB is Tim Bush. Since 2011, Bush, a former ICAEW Council member, and self-confessed MBA-group-think-phobe, has taken the lead on governance and financial analysis at PIRC. His assessment of accountancy’s shortcomings is disarmingly blunt – not only have accountants lost the big picture, they have the detail wrong.
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Opinion Pieces
Retirement saving boost
Who will manage the new My Retirement Account (MyRA) retirement savings vehicle? This is a big question for the US pension fund industry now that President Barack Obama has created the new programme.
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Opinion Pieces
Thomas Richter CEO BVI, Germany’s asset management association
“Auto enrolment would make sense in Germany and could develop through collective bargaining”
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Opinion Pieces
Brussels to develop rules for social funds
Brussels looks set to flesh out the existing EU regulation for European Social Entrepreneurship Funds (EuSEFs), which lays down broad principles as to how funds should be governed.
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Opinion Pieces
Intriguing opportunities
De-risking strategies are likely to become more popular with US corporate pension funds now they have reached their healthiest state since the crisis. This trend has been ongoing for the last couple of years but may substantially accelerate in 2014, says consultancy Towers Watson.
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Opinion Pieces
Debbie Harrison Visiting professor The Pensions Institute, Cass Business School, UK
“The most important factor that determines the outcome in DC pensions is the member charge, not the investment strategy”
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Features
Trust me, I manage money
No-one doubts that trust, ethics and integrity are central to pension and investment management.
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Features
When China sneezes… 2014
The spectre of the volatility that struck emerging markets in 2013 hangs over many of the investment pages of this month’s IPE. And no wonder – it feels like last year provided confirmation, at last, that these markets are entering a new paradigm.
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Features
On the quiet
Activist investors are sometimes a colourful breed. One of them was the now infamous Florian Homm, who fell from grace in September 2007 in spectacular style.
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Features
Large schemes warming to local investment
Dutch pension funds’ assets of €1trn were the Holy Grail for politicians and companies to plug banks’ funding gap of €478bn last year. By taking over a substantial amount of mortgage loans, pension funds could free up banks’ lending capacity and kick-start the ailing housing market and local economy.
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Opinion Pieces
Not ready yet
‘Retirement readiness’ is the catch phrase of 2014 in the US pension industry.
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Opinion Pieces
Nitin Mehta, CFA Managing director, EMEA, CFA Institute
“Over recent decades, secular shifts in values have resulted in too much emphasis on profits and not enough on professionalism”
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News
IPE Views: Liboring under false pretences
The Libor and Euribor fines expose not only the importance of engagement, but also the cost of inaction for pension funds
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Features
The fiduciary fight
Should trustees feel constrained by the existing interpretation of their fiduciary duties?
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Opinion Pieces
Matthew Kiernan, Inflection Point Capital Man. & Paul Clements-Hunt, The Blended Capital Group:“Investors who fail to develop systematically aware investment processes risk commercial extinction”
There is no shortage of high-wattage brainpower directed to the promotion of longer-term finance and investing.
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Features
Funds to increase infrastructure investment
Nearly two-thirds of pension funds and other institutional investors expect their allocations to infrastructure to increase over the next 18 months, according to a survey by IPE and Stirling Capital Partners.
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Opinion Pieces
ESG 2.0 – let’s get serious
The responsible investment community has done something very important. It has raised awareness that institutional investors who define their job as beating the peer group benchmark are being irresponsible – stewardship responsibilities for the long term are now on the agenda. But the current trading-oriented model of investment is impossible to align with these responsibilities.
