epn: European Pensions & Investment News articles from August 2004

epn: European Pensions & Investment News archives from August 2004

News: SocGen pushes PERCO as European prototype.
August 2, 2004... Societe Generale Asset Management (SGAM) is to lobby for the new French corporate pension vehicle PERCO to serve as a prototype pan-European scheme. This takes up the challenge for the design of a feasible pan-European pensions vehicle set...

News: Four strategies negative in June.
August 2, 2004... The latest Edhec figures show that four out of 13 hedge fund strategies turned in a negative performance in June, with commodities trading advisor (CTA) global (-3.7%) and convertible arbitrage (CA) (-1.05%) being the worst performing...

News: Germans to boost equities and alternatives.
August 2, 2004... German institutional investors on average aim to up equities and alternative investments by 5% each and cut fixed-income holdings by 10% in the medium to long term, according to a survey conducted in the first quarter of this year by...

News: Slovakia tackles crisis.
August 2, 2004... Radical changes to Slovakia's ailing pay-as-you-go state pension system and the creation of a three-pillar pensions model will result in increased foreign asset manager involvement in a second pillar that could grow to E1.6bn by 2010. This...

News: BNP Paribas pension aims at SMEs.
August 2, 2004... BNP Paribas Epargne & Retraite has this month launched a new corporate pension product for small and medium size enterprises (SMEs) and expects the product to generate an average of E15m in new business for its asset management arm each year....

News: In brief.
August 2, 2004... BGI TO LAUNCH POOLED FUND As we reported last month in epn's Dutch sister publication, npn, Barclays Global Investors is launching a pooled commodities fund to service the needs of pension funds - both large and small. "Commodities...

News: S&P indices to boost client base.
August 2, 2004... S&P Index Services plans to significantly expand its European pension fund client base for the S&P Citigroup global index series it acquired last year. It is on the verge of appointing a director for European business development, but will...

People on the move: External head for AP1.
August 2, 2004... AP1, the E15bn Swedish buffer fund, has appointed Rikard Kjorling, formerly of SEB Asset Management, as head of external management, a newly formed unit that has the overall responsibility for the fund's external mandates. These 15 mandates...

People on the move: SSC names Baker.
August 2, 2004... State Street Corporation has named Peter Baker as head of its pension and collective investment servicing business. He will report to Jeff Conway, head of the firm's investor services business in the UK and northern Europe. As part of this role...

People on the move: SSC adds to global team.
August 2, 2004... State Street Corporation's investment research and trading arm has expanded its outreach to European funds with the addition of Toby Goold and Paul McGee to its global markets' asset owner group. Goold will facilitate new business development...

People on the move: Egger for Vienna office.
August 2, 2004... In a third appointment, State Street Corporation has appointed Madeleine Egger as country manager for Austria and manager of its Vienna office. Prior to this new function she was employed by ABN Amro Bank, most recently as country head for...

People on the move: Melchiors joins board.
August 2, 2004... Hans Heinrich Melchiors CEO of the HVB Pensionskasse, Support Fund and Pensionsfonds, is to become a board member of the insurer Volksfursorge. He will head the newly-created corporate pensions division.

People on the move: JPMF gains adviser.
August 2, 2004... JPMorgan Fleming Asset Management has appointed Lee Ann Thompson to the role of client adviser in its UK institutional team. She will report to Peter Ball. Thompson joins from Barclays Global Investors where she was a principal in the...

News: Bayer signs first client.
August 2, 2004... Bayer, the German chemical giant, is preparing to compete in the multi- employer pensions sector with its new defined contribution-oriented pension scheme, and has already signed up its first client. Bayer created its second fund,...

News: Watson to buy up KPMG's Irish actuaries.
August 2, 2004... Watson Wyatt is to acquire KPMG's pension and actuarial group in Ireland. KPMG's 10-strong team, which is led by Raymond McKenna and includes senior actuaries Paul O'Brien and Brian Mulcair, will join Watson Wyatt's existing 60 Irish staff...

News: Swiss funds record losses.
August 2, 2004... Swiss pension funds turned in second quarter median results of -1.1%, according to figures from InterSec's Swiss balanced universe, while the performance measurement company's balanced benchmark did slightly better at - 1%. At the same...

News Analysis: Half of trustees disregard Myners.
August 2, 2004... The second part of a review of the implementation of the Myners report's ten principles for better pension fund governance has found that almost half of trustees surveyed for the report believed implementation had brought no benefit to the...

Comment: Leader - Ideas, but the jury's still out on progress.
August 2, 2004... The UK has historically been good at inventing things but less effective at turning those ideas into objects that can be made and sold. True to form, Britain has been better at coming up with concepts for improving pension fund investment than...

Comment: World View - A word of caution.
August 2, 2004... Uncertainty brings risk and risk often leads to decisions that are inappropriate for the particular stage of the market. Until recently, investors generally had to deal with well defined asset classes that were divided into bonds, equities,...

Comment: Industry Voice - On death and taxes.
August 2, 2004... In this world nothing is certain but death and taxes, wrote a resigned Benjamin Franklin on 1789 in a letter to JB Leroy. Although there is no 'scoop' that we can write on the possibility to reverse both certainties, recent EU initiatives...

Comment: Mephisto.
August 2, 2004... With more than 3m people in the UK seriously under-providing for their retirement and up to 10m needing to save more or work longer, the shadow secretary of state for work and pensions, David Willetts, who enjoys the popular moniker 'two...

Special Focus: US investments - Joining the rush.
August 2, 2004... New York is positively buzzing with Europeans these days. Aside from the expats and tourists enjoying their strong pounds and euros, brands from this side of the Atlantic are thick on the ground. Take, for example, financial services, where,...

Special Focus: US investments - Dollar values: Institutions hedge their bets on the currency.
August 2, 2004... Thankfully for Matthew Gilman, senior real estate portfolio manager at ABP Investments USA in New York, ABP measures its managers' performance based on local currency returns, not in euros. Otherwise, the plummeting dollar would have wreaked...

Special Focus: US investments - Small is beautiful but risky.
August 2, 2004... From Marian Pardo's viewpoint, as managing director for US small- and mid-cap equities at Credit Suisse Asset Management (CSAM) in New York, European institutional investors tend to fall into two camps. "There are the ones who find the...

Special Focus: US investments - Property still raking it in.
August 2, 2004... Back in the autumn of 2002, Matthew Gilman, senior real estate portfolio manager for ABP Investments USA in New York, told his bosses in Amsterdam that it was time to start selling some of its $8bn in US property. "We said we were...

Special Focus: US investments - The search for high returns.
August 2, 2004... Institutional fixed income investors are faced with a dilemma these days. Global economic recovery is allegedly under way, dampening sovereign and investment-grade bond markets, but even in these better times equities aren't producing the...

Pension Fund Profile: PNO Media - Climbing the asset coverage mountain.
August 2, 2004... In Dutch terms, the E1.8bn PNO Media pension fund invests a relatively high proportion in equities with a current allocation of around 50%. But forays into private equity and US fixed income aside, the partly internally managed portfolio is...

Pensions Snapshot: Slovakia.
August 2, 2004... The Slovakian government is in trouble. The country's population is set to fall by some 10% to 4.9m between now and 2050. Just 46% of men and 11% of women aged 55 to 64 are in active employment and outgoings from the unfunded pay-as-you-go...

News: Largest German first-pillar scheme eyes hedge funds.
August 30, 2004... The Munich-based E30bn Bayerische Versorgungskammer (BVK) is preparing to invest in hedge funds for the first time by the end of March next year. For now, it plans to allocate up to 2.5% of its assets to alternative assets - investing in...

News: PGI in preferred securities move.
August 30, 2004... US asset manager Principal Global Investors (PGI) has signed up ABN Amro to distribute a short-term preferred securities fund to institutional investors in Europe and South America. Merrill Lynch Investment Managers also plans to roll out a...

News: epn survey finds allocation shift to bonds.
August 30, 2004... The results of epn's latest quarterly investment survey show that investors are having to adjust to tricky market conditions. The study, which took in 20 pension fund and asset managers with more than E4.5 trillion of assets under...

News: Pension fund threat.
August 30, 2004... Corporate pension funds are running the risk of serious funding shortfalls by retaining high equity weightings, according to ABN Amro. Research by Alistair McCreadie, credit analyst at ABN Amro, warns FTSE 100 companies, with pension funds...

News: Markets hit Swiss pensions.
August 30, 2004... Swiss pension funds have seen 2004 first-half returns slip below the long- term average, but can blame the fall on market conditions rather than on any ill-advised asset allocation changes. The median return was 1.8% for the six months to...

News: News in brief.
August 30, 2004... ABN sees European growth Europe can be expected to outperform the US in both equities and bonds over the next two years, according to ABN Amro. However, the new research also predicts a rough ride for global markets, as the trends behind...

News: UK funds split over alternatives.
August 30, 2004... UK pension funds are split on the question of alternatives, with 49% either investing or considering investing in hedge funds. According to a survey by Pioneer Alternative Investments of 96 pension funds, 16% are currently invested in hedge...

News: People on the move.
August 30, 2004... Macdonell to NTGI Northern Trust Global Investments (NTGI) has boosted its active international equity team by recruiting Helen Macdonell as portfolio manager. The appointment comes as NTGI plans a global active product launch next year,...

News: Swedish funds see strong results.
August 30, 2004... Swedish funds AP1 and AP2 have both released data showing half-year returns of 5.5%, on the back of strong growth from domestic equities. AP1 saw its assets boosted to Skr149.2bn (E16.3bn). This was thanks to "equities and mainly Swedish...

News: Norwegian oil fund negative despite outperformance.
August 30, 2004... The Norwegian Government Petroleum Fund produced a negative return in Q2 of this year, but outperformed its benchmark for the sixth quarter in a row. The Nkr942.4bn (E114bn) fund returned -0.15% in the three months to end June this year in...

Comment: Leader - UK needs to take a look at fund options.
August 30, 2004... Whereas pension funds are often affected by a 'you jump first' mentality when it comes to investment decisions, issues that have a financial impact on the sponsor generally provoke a more decisive response. There is often not one single...

Comment: World View - Return to the doldrums.
August 30, 2004... It is generally assumed that equity markets tend to discount future developments. Since March 2004, equity markets in the developed world have appeared to be range-bound, with substantial intraweek volatility, but little direction. Only...

Comment: Industry Voice - Pensions as poison pill?
August 30, 2004... Anyone reading the mainstream UK press recently cannot have missed the growing importance of pensions in merger and acquisition (M&A) transactions. Pensions have been moving up the agenda in any case ever since surpluses were replaced with...

Comment: Mephisto.
August 30, 2004... Mephisto's heart goes out to European pension fund managers. The pressures they are under to more effectively match their assets with their liabilities means that an increasing number are ploughing more of their portfolio into bonds at a time...

EPN Quarterly Investment Survey: Bonds continue to gain in popularity as equities falter.
August 30, 2004... Investors are continuing to cut into their equity holdings in favour of bonds with almost a third planning to make more reductions over the next six months, according to the results of epn's latest quarterly institutional investor survey. ...

EPN Quarterly Investment Survey: Market believes oil has reached its peak.
August 30, 2004... Less than five years ago the market was agonising about the price of oil slipping down to $5 a barrel, but by the third week of this month the cost of US light, sweet crude had surged to an historic peak of $49.27. News that the IMF, the...

Special Focus: Custody - Multinationals plunge into pooling.
August 30, 2004... The pace of European multinational pooling is starting to pick up. Earlier this month Nestle, the Swiss-based global food group, announced that it was "very seriously" considering pooling the assets of its E3.8bn pension fund; at the beginning...

Special Focus: Custody - Luxembourg: Jurisdiction cuts taxes to gain market share.
August 30, 2004... Administration and custody giants State Street and Bank of New York (BoNY) are optimistic about Luxembourg, following the abolition of the annual subscription tax on pension pooling vehicles. According to David Claus, BoNY's head of...

Special Focus: Custody - IBM gives itself first-mover advantage through a multi-country vehicle.
August 30, 2004... While most firms continue to toy with the idea of multinational pooling, IBM is giving itself a first-mover advantage. The firm, which established its first unit trust in Ireland in 2001 and set up its initial multi-country vehicle for global...

Special Focus: Custody - The creation of tax-transparent investment vehicles look likely to solve the problems of withholding taxes.
August 30, 2004... Custodians are gearing up to take advantage of multinationals' renewed interest in cross-border pooling. After a long period of inactivity, a number of corporates are making definitive moves into the market. The problems surrounding...

Commodities: Dutch funds hope to get high alpha.
August 30, 2004... Investment in commodities on the part of Dutch pension foundations is growing - the average commitment from big foundations such as PME, ABP and PGGM is 5% of assets. And this translates into large cash sums, sometimes in excess of E1bn....

Pensions Snapshot: United Kingdom.
August 30, 2004... The results of Lane Clark & Peacock's (LCP) August Accounting for Pensions survey was welcome news to the UK's spluttering occupational pensions sector. The consultant, which examined the pension health of the country's top 100 companies,...