epn: European Pensions & Investment News articles from February 2005

epn: European Pensions & Investment News archives from February 2005

News: Funds clamour for French 50-year bond.
February 14, 2005... The seven investment banks chosen by the French treasury agency (AFT) to gauge investor demand for a 50-year euro-denominated issue have until the end of the month to present their findings to AFT's chief investment officer Bertrand de...

News: UK deficits constant.
February 14, 2005... Pension fund deficits in FTSE 350 companies remained constant in 2004 despite rises in equity markets, according to a survey conducted by Mercer Human Resource Consulting. Fund deficits for FTSE 350 companies fell from E106bn to E103 in...

News: Confusion reigns as UK government withdraws key announcement on PPF.
February 14, 2005... The UK government last week announced that pension funds receiving protection from the much-criticised Pension Protection Fund (PPF) would have to pay a levy of GBP15 (E21.82) for every one of their active members and pensioners, and GBP5 for...

News: Dutch advisers positive.
February 14, 2005... Providers of external pension fund governance services are stepping up their activities in the Netherlands. "The discussion around pension fund governance and the increased stress on pension fund governance by the Dutch National Bank is...

News: Chinese negative stock returns.
February 14, 2005... China was the only one of the world's largest 26 stock markets to post negative inflation-adjusted equity returns in 2004, while France (11 per cent), Sweden (11 per cent) and Denmark (10 per cent) pulled-in the highest bond returns in local...

News: News in brief - German third-pillar take-up.
February 14, 2005... The German asset management association, the BVI, has reported disappointing growth in the number of supplementary pension policies with an investment fund component. Although the number of policies grew by 20 per cent in 2004, the...

News: News in brief - 80% of FTSE100 offers DC.
February 14, 2005... A survey of UK FTSE100 companies by the consultancy Watson Wyatt has found that 80 per cent of the companies offer a DC plan. Half of these had an occupational DC plan rather than a retail stakeholder or group personal pension contract. ...

News: News in brief - ING Group ups retirement.
February 14, 2005... The ING group has increased the retirement age for the 35,000 participants in its Dutch pension fund from 62 to 65. Employees who want to retire before they reach 65 will be able to do so via an individual third-pillar levensloop fund. This...

News: News in brief - Lindner offers property fund.
February 14, 2005... Lindner Immobilien Asset Management in Dusseldorf is set to launch of an institutional open-ended real estate fund focussing on public-private partnership projects. The new fund is designed to ensure sustainable cash-flow income and is...

News: Storebrand Life exploits Norwegian advantage to target Swedish savers.
February 14, 2005... Storebrand Life, part of Norway's Storebrand Group, is planning to launch a Swedish branch in July 2005. The new office will market pensions products to Swedish investors. Lars Loddesol, executive vice president of Storebrand Life, told...

People on the move: Hans Aasnaes heads Storebrand as MD.
February 14, 2005... Storebrand Investments has appointed Hans Aasnas as its managing director and as a member of the group's executive committee from 1 February. Aasnas, who joined Storebrand Investments in 1994, previously acted as Storebrand's portfolio manager...

People on the move: Prudhomme moves to Reim from EBRD.
February 14, 2005... Arnaud Prudhomme has been appointed as global chief operating officer at Axa Real Estate Investment Management (Reim). He joins from the European Bank for Reconstruction & Development where he was head of the president's office. As part of his...

People on the move: Healy shifts experience to MFS.
February 14, 2005... MFS International has appointed Anne Healy as director of relationship management and marketing. Ms Healy worked on business development and client relationship management at Schroders. Paul Price, managing director for Eurasian...

People on the move: Frischlander jumps ship for Mellon.
February 14, 2005... Anne-Laurie Frischlander has jumped ship from HSBC Private Bank (France) to join Mellon Global Investments as a sales executive responsible for France. She will be promoting Mellon's range of offshore pooled funds to multi- manager platforms,...

People on the move: Klaus Duehrkop to chair Allianz Greece board.
February 14, 2005... Allianz Greece has named Klaus Duehrkop as chairman of its board. Duehrkop previously served as executive vice-president of Allianz AG and board member of Allianz Greece. Duehrkop succeeds Jerome Delendas, who acted as the chairman of...

News: Brummer targets corporate pension schemes.
February 14, 2005... Brummer & Partners, leading Swedish hedge fund manager, is marketing a new hedge fund product to corporate pension schemes. Through its newly established subsidiary, Alpha & Beta Fondforsakring, the fund manager plans to offer unit-linked...

News: Standard Life matches State Street with liability-matching product.
February 14, 2005... Standard Life has joined State Street in the rush to bring pooled liability matching funds to the market. It has launched a sterling-denominated liability-managed credit fund product, with a euro-denominated tranche planned for later this year....

News: Ramius to form Europe sales team, says CEO.
February 14, 2005... Ramius HVB Partners, the joint venture between HVB Alternatives and the US fund of hedge funds manager Ramius Capital, is to establish a European sales team this year, according to its CEO and CIO, Thomas Strauss. Investment specialists...

News: Franktfurt Trust builds fund around Altigefi.
February 14, 2005... Frankfurt Trust, the German asset management company whose parent BHF Bank was recently acquired by Sal. Oppenheim from ING in the Netherlands, is to launch a fund of hedge fund through its French subsidiary Altigefi. FT HedgeSelection...

News: Strong Austrian returns.
February 14, 2005... Boosted by strong domestic equity markets, Austrian pension funds reported strong returns in 2004 as assets topped E10bn for the first time. The industry is also expecting increasing demand for occupational pensions. Funds reported an...

News: Finnish funds continue growth.
February 14, 2005... The Finnish Pension Alliance (TELA) reports that its members' investments continued to grow steadily in 2004. Investments by TELA members increased by E9.3bn over 2003, bringing their total investments to E87.9bn. Marked changes also took...

News: Watson Wyatt shifts focus to German multi-nationals.
February 14, 2005... The investment and benefits consultant Watson Wyatt intends to increasingly concentrate on German domestic multinationals. "We are in the process of changing our emphasis," said Susanne Jungblut, practice leader for benefits consulting at...

News: Finnish sales recover.
February 14, 2005... The Federation of Finnish Insurance Companies (VAKES) reports that sales of individual pension policies recovered after an initial slowdown in 2004. Finnish insurance companies sold a total of 45,000 policies in 2004, with contributions...

Swiss funds: Weak asset allocation key to poor Swiss performance.
February 14, 2005... Swiss pension funds underperformed their benchmarks in 2004 as equity markets slipped sideways. According to the latest data from WM Performance Services, the median manager of their Swiss Balanced Universe of pension funds increased by...

Comment: Leader - The fallen paradigm plays catch-up.
February 14, 2005... The UK, which once regarded its high level of funded occupational and private pension provision as a model for Europe, is now finding that it is playing catch-up with other countries. The Treasury has long wanted to shift provision away...

Comment: World View - Oil no-longer holds sway over the Fed.
February 14, 2005... Newsmen and commentators frequently rely on oft-repeated economic myths, such as the connection between energy commodities and currency fluctuations, to explain developments on the financial markets. But although those linkages often seem...

Comment: Industry Voice - A global asset class.
February 14, 2005... We live in an era when central banks have been relatively successful with their inflation-targeting policies. So it might seem surprising that inflation-linked bonds have continued to see sizeable demand. European pension funds have...

Comment: Mephisto.
February 14, 2005... Mephisto knows that his close allies, the hedge fund managers of this world, are a secretive bunch. Dressed in their tribal uniform of Church's loafers, open-necked shirts and sports jackets, they like to keep a low profile in Connecticut or...

Special Focus: UK - Hunting for an elusive solution.
February 14, 2005... It is nearly eight years since the UK's prime minister, Tony Blair, told his welfare minister Frank Field to think the unthinkable. He did and promptly lost his job. Now the UK is assessing its own pensions "unthinkable" - namely compulsion and...

Special Focus: UK - Britain: a nation of naive grasshoppers?
February 14, 2005... Compared to their Dutch or Swiss neighbours, Britons are akin to the grasshopper of Aesop's fable, he who scoffed when the ant diligently provided himself with a winter nest, but who promptly froze to death in the winter. At least this is...

Special Focus: UK - Trustees become the quarry.
February 14, 2005... A position of trust carries with it a moral imperative to understand the obligations that accompany that position: the more complicated the task, the greater the burden of the corresponding obligation. And if the law actively specifies what...

Special Focus: UK - Solvency doubts continue ahead of PPF launch.
February 14, 2005... In just a few weeks' time, the UK's Pension Protection Fund (PPF) goes live. The fund, set up to support the victims of pension scheme collapses, has poached Barclays Global Investors' head of asset and liability management, Partha Dasgupta, as...

Special Focus: UK - Fears mount that UK PPF could sound death knell for DB schemes.
February 14, 2005... It remains far from clear how successful the Pension Protection Fund will be when it opens its doors for business on 6 April this year. But one thing employers can be certain of is that the cost of running a defined benefit pension scheme is...

Fund Derivatives: Could 2005 be the year of the fund derivative?
February 14, 2005... 1984 - interest rate derivatives. 1999 - credit derivatives. 2005 - fund derivatives? Derivative products have come a long way since the first currency swap between the World Bank and IBM back in 1981. Over the last 20 years, derivative...

Market Overview 2004: Small caps continue to rise as large caps struggle.
February 14, 2005... Market movements during 2004 divided neatly into two distinct phases. The first half of the year saw what were generally sideways movements, while the second half saw steady gains. But across the year as a whole, the consistent theme was...

Pension Fund Profile: De Eendragt - A Dutch fund with aces up its sleeve.
February 14, 2005... Operated on behalf of 16 paper and packing companies, with assets of approximately e775m, Stichting Pensioenfonds De Eendragt is not especially large. Even so, it does have one or two aces up its sleeve. For starters it has a coverage ratio...

Pensions Snapshot: France.
February 14, 2005... Expansive claims have been made for France's tax-advantageous supplementary retirement savings regime, created by the Loi Fillon of 21 August 2003, which came into force last year. At least 2,000 companies have now put a corporate Perco...

News: Belgian Silver Fund rejects diversification.
February 28, 2005... The Belgian Silver Fund, created in 2001 to cover the costs of population ageing, will not diversify its portfolio outside of government bonds, Johan Vande Lanotte, the Belgian budget minister and deputy prime minister, told epn in an exclusive...

News: Dutch change retirement law.
February 28, 2005... The Dutch senate last week approved legislation to reform the country's early retirement rules, reducing the age at which workers can retire and paving the way for a system of individual accounts. The changes remove the fiscal advantages of...

News: Dutch senate approves early retirement plan.
February 28, 2005... Tuesday 22 February was a red letter day for the Dutch pension system as the senate approved the government's new concept for an individual early retirement plan, known as levensloop. Fiscal rules applying to the existing pension system...

News: AFT issues 2055 bond.
February 28, 2005... Less than two and a half weeks after the French treasury (AFT) first asked seven investment banks to scout the market for interest in a 2055 bond, France has become the first G7 country to issue a 50-year note. The E60bn issue pays four per...

News: IP pulls back from US PE.
February 28, 2005... Industriens Pension in Denmark has scaled down plans to move into the US private equity market. Jan Ostergaard, chief investment officer at IP, told epn that the fund had become "less ambitious" about diversifying into the US. "For the moment,...

News: Danish expansion into private equity.
February 28, 2005... Pension Danmark, which has assets of DKr41bn (E5.6bn) is expanding its investment in private equity by DKr750m (E100m) this year. The additional funds will be invested in small and medium-sized companies within Denmark as well as in the...

News: News in brief.
February 28, 2005... PIMCO IN SHARE CLASS LAUNCH Pimco is to launch a Norwegian kroner share class at the end of March that will allow local investors to diversify their bond portfolio without increasing their currency risk. Peter Lindgren, director of...

News: Pension funds taking high risk.
February 28, 2005... Significant numbers of pension funds globally are taking too much risk in their investment portfolios and analysts are taking increasing notice of the debt burden implicit in pension obligations, according to a survey carried out by the...

People on the move: Currie promoted.
February 28, 2005... AXA Investment Managers (AXA IM) has promoted Kathleen Currie to director of structured solutions. Currie will be based at AXA IM's London office and report to Nathalie Boullefort-Fulconis, global head of institutional business. Her main...

People on the move: Bergman joins PGI.
February 28, 2005... Principal Global Investors (PGI) has appointed Ulrika Bergman as head of business development for Scandinavia and Benelux. Bergman is joining PGI from Morley Fund Management, where she was responsible for Nordic investments since 2001....

People on the move: CAAM hires Blanque.
February 28, 2005... Credit Agricole Asset Management (CAAM) has appointed Pascal Blanque as its chief investment officer from 1 March 2005. Blanque, who joined Credit Agricole in May 2000, previously acted as head of the economics research department and as chief...

People on the move: New head of research for SAM Group.
February 28, 2005... Sustainable Asset Management (SAM) has appointed Christian Werner to head SAM Group's research team consisting of financial and sustainability specialists. Mr Werner joins SAM from Allianz Dresdner in Frankfurt, where he was global research...

People on the move: Olesen moves to ATP.
February 28, 2005... Denmark's ATP pension fund has appointed Frank Olesen as head of business development and IT. Olesen previously worked as ATP's IT-director. He is succeeding Peder Ostermark Andreasen, who has become the CEO of Denmark's new state-owned energy...

People on the move: ABN completes its European team.
February 28, 2005... ABN Amro has hired Dominic White as the fifth member of its European economics team. White previously worked as an economist at the UK Treasury. "The addition of Dominic completes the expansion of our economics team in London and will ensure...

People on the move: Kramer joins Lombard.
February 28, 2005... Ben Kramer has joined Lombard Odier Darier Hentsch Asset Management in the Netherlands. He will be responsible for sales, acquisitions and product and business development, and previously worked for KAS Bank, where he was responsible for sales...

People on the move: NT appoints two to its London team.
February 28, 2005... Northern Trust's manager of managers operation, NT Global Investors, has appointed Elisabeth Lumsden and Michelle Hilliman to its London research team. Ms Lumsden, previously deputy CIO of AXA Investment Managers' multi- manager business, will...

Spanish funds return 6.5%.
February 28, 2005... The Spanish pension investment performance survey (PIPS), conducted by Mercer Investment Consulting among 56 Spanish pension funds, has found that the funds' investments returned an average of 6.5 per cent in 2004. Investments in European...

News: Watson Wyatt in court action.
February 28, 2005... Watson Wyatt is confident that the UK courts will overturn the legal case brought against it on behalf of the British staff pension fund of Credit Lyonnais, which has now merged with Credit Agricole. Watson Wyatt confirmed in a statement that a...

News: Slow start for the Folkeborsen.
February 28, 2005... Statistics concerning the first month of Denmark's Folkeborsen pension savings scheme revealed that the top ten funds were all equity based. The best-selling bond-based fund came in only at thirteenth place. Keld Nicolaisen, the manager at...

News: Price war begins in ETF sector.
February 28, 2005... A price war in the exchange traded fund (ETF) industry is catching the attention of Europe's pension funds, but they remain as yet unconvinced of the ability of ETFs to replace conventional passive investment products and futures. Barclays...

News: Cost of institutional shares deters investors.
February 28, 2005... High and opaque costs are preventing German institutions from investing in alternatives to traditional Spezialfonds, such as institutional share classes of mutual funds, newly opened to German investors. A survey of the market in mutual...

News: Dutch move to meet duration demand.
February 28, 2005... Two Dutch asset managers are launching products to assist pension funds looking to lengthen the duration of their bond portfolios. Fortis Investment and Robeco Asset Management are both on the verge of bringing products to the market. Jan...

News: Hedge fund of funds industry slated.
February 28, 2005... The hedge fund of funds industry needs to go further to meet the reporting requirements of institutional investors, particularly on measures of extreme risk. This is the conclusion of a study of 98 hedge funds and their investors carried out by...

News: ABS launches high-alpha fund.
February 28, 2005... ABS Investment Management, a US-based fund of hedge funds, is marketing a high-alpha investment fund with market exposure of between plus and minus 20 per cent, which it is positioning as an alternative to arbitrage strategies. This comes...

News: Loss for hedge fund index.
February 28, 2005... Van Hedge Funds Advisors International has reported that the Van Global Hedge Fund Index lost 0.1 per cent net of fees in January 2005. The index represents the average reported monthly net return of hedge funds following a broad range of...

News Analysis: FRR delays bond investments.
February 28, 2005... The French Pensions Reserve Fund (FRR), which awarded its first tranche of bond and equity mandates to the asset management community some 10 months ago, has still yet to invest more than half of its original E16bn-worth of assets - which has...

Comment: Leader - European economies turn, turn, turn.
February 28, 2005... Britain has enjoyed a virtually unprecedented 50 quarters - 12 and a half years - of economic growth since its forced expulsion from the European exchange rate mechanism in October 1992. To add to the rosy picture, the FTSE 100 index has...

Comment: World View - Decoupling revisited.
February 28, 2005... Decoupling continues to be an issue in financial markets, particularly with the large variation in performance between developed and developing markets. It is also undeniable that European equity markets have performed better in recent...

Comment: Industry Voice - "Alpha", did you say alpha"?
February 28, 2005... The search for alpha is key both to the arguments deployed in asset management companies' sales patter and equally and logically to the systems and methods used to evaluate their offerings. This ubiquity of alpha seems especially pertinent for...

Comment: Mephisto.
February 28, 2005... February 2005 has been a month of political outrage, confusion and soul searching in Bulgaria. Last week, Bulgarians were fuming over a Turkish soup advertisement which depicted a Turkish gastarbeiter bribing Bulgarian border guards with...

Dutch Statistics: WM Dutch pension fund index.
February 28, 2005... The indirect property investments of Dutch pension funds performed exceptionally well in 2004 according to the WM Company's pension fund index. Far east ex Japan equity investments also performed well with a total return of over 20 per cent....

German Statistics: Universal's M-KAG inflows up 50%.
February 28, 2005... Universal Investments, the specialist German institutional fund administration company, topped the business in terms of master KAG fund inflows last year with new business inflows up 50 per cent, according to figures released by the German fund...

Special Focus: Eastern Europe - Finding hidden opportunites.
February 28, 2005... Unfortunately for investors into eastern Europe, last year was the year to be invested. Driven by accession to the European Union, markets rocketed by as much as 110 per cent in the case of Slovakia (see table). Investors rushed to exploit...

Special Focus: Eastern Europe - Eastern gateway.
February 28, 2005... Over the past few years, Russia has been something of success story in an emerging market sector that is no stranger to crisis. Nordic financial institutions, which moved quickly to capitalise on opportunities in new neighbouring markets like...

Pension Fund Profile: ATP - Sailing in calmer seas.
February 28, 2005... Industry observers in Denmark are often scathing about the political consensus-mongering that has protected the country's blue-collar pension schemes from open competition. The parliamentary elections to the Folketing on 8 February, comfortably...

Pensions Snapshot: Belgium.
February 28, 2005... The two hundredth anniversary of the creation of the Belgian kingdom in 2030 will coincide with a worrying development. As the fireworks fizz and crack in the night sky above the Grand Place, the audience will be considerably more wrinkled than...