epn: European Pensions & Investment News articles from January 2005

epn: European Pensions & Investment News archives from January 2005

News: German SME demand for pension refinancing.
January 17, 2005... A number of financial services firms are developing innovative solutions to fund German corporates' pension liabilities. The majority of these promises are currently held on firms' balance sheets as corporate book reserves. The independent...

News: Denmark launches Folkeborsen scheme.
January 17, 2005... The Danish government has launched a new investment platform, known as Folkeborsen, under its special pensions savings scheme (Sarlig Pensionopsparing). The new platform allows Danish investors to choose from among approximately 200 Danish and...

News: Equities expected to disappoint.
January 17, 2005... Investors have lowered their expectations of equity market performance and are much more cautious about jumping into hedge funds, according to epn's latest investment outlook survey - which took in 18 pension and investment managers with some...

News: Aegon in pan-Europe pension discussions.
January 17, 2005... The insurance group Aegon aims to put the Netherlands on the map when it comes to pan-European pensions management. It is in talks with leading suppliers for the supply of custody services for its pension asset pooling capabilities and has also...

News: State Street launches liability fund.
January 17, 2005... State Street Global Advisers is close to signing agreements with undisclosed pension funds for a pooled swaps-based fund to allow UK pension funds to match fixed income investments to liabilities. It is targeted at the estimated +100-140bn...

News: News in brief.
January 17, 2005... USB China venture Swiss investment giant UBS has joined forces with the Chinese State Development Investment Corporation (SDIC) to launch a joint venture fund management company. UBS will purchase a 49 per cent stake in Shenzhen-based...

News: SRI toolkit will aid pension fund trustees.
January 17, 2005... The European Social Investment Forum (Eurosif) has extended its promotion of socially responsible investing with the launch of an SRI toolkit designed to aid pension fund trustees. The Pension Programme SRI toolkit is aimed at trustees who...

News: NIB takes over Fund Partners.
January 17, 2005... NIB Capital is to take over the remaining 49.9 % shareholding of Fund Partners, a speciality pension investment boutique based in Laren, the Netherlands. Hague-based NIB Capital already had a majority 51.1% stake in Fund Partners, with the...

News: Pohjola launches new products.
January 17, 2005... Pohjola Life's acquisition of Suomi Group's +1.2bn life insurance operation is to result in the introduction of new savings products. Ilkka Lohi, head of development at Suomi Group, told epn that Pohjola Life has been undergoing a...

News: German managers make new offering.
January 17, 2005... Several German asset managers, including the Allianz Group and Union Alternative Assets, are preparing to offer private equity products to institutional investors for the first time. A growing number of these investors, including the science...

News: Telecom institution seeks to diversify.
January 17, 2005... The Bundesanstalt fur Post und Telekommunikation (BAnst PT), a by-product of the partial privatisation of Germany's postal system in the 1990s, wants to increase the international allocation of its asset portfolio. "We are aiming at...

News: Swiss Cantonal Banks rebrand.
January 17, 2005... The Swiss Cantonal Banks have rebranded their investment and pension operations as Swisscanto. While the firm is keen to stress the move does not represent a merger, the existing Prevista, Servisa and Swissca brands will be replaced by the...

News: Sampo joins Swedish PPM.
January 17, 2005... Sampo Fund Management (SFM), part of Finland's Sampo Group, has started offering funds for Swedish pension savers. Kimmo Laaksonen, managing director of SFM, told epn that Sampo expects more than ten thousand Swedes to opt for Sampo's funds...

News: Citigroup launches global macro fund.
January 17, 2005... Citigroup is set to mark the establishment of the first German hedge fund administration company with the launch of a new global macro fund later this month. The new hedge fund platform, Citigroup Deutschland Kapitalanlagegesellschaft...

News: Mercer study predicts hedge fund growth.
January 17, 2005... Liability-driven investing and hedge funds will be the biggest growth areas for the European pensions industry this year, according to the results of Mercer's study of 55 European institutional managers with some $10 trillion of assets under...

News: Hedge funds continue to rise.
January 17, 2005... Hedge funds continued to perform strongly in December with the Standard & Poor's hedge fund index reporting a 1.23% rise. Good returns from both directional and event-driven strategies ensured the sector's success. S&P's directional/tactical...

News: RBM extends its range.
January 17, 2005... South African fund manager RMB MultiManagers has extended the range of its five funds of hedge funds, adding euro- and sterling-denominated share classes. The move follows recent changes that allowed hedge fund managers to offer share classes...

News Analysis: European lobbying under way.
January 17, 2005... Across the EU 25 member states, six face general elections, while a further four will go to the polls to elect their country's president. New leaders will mean new initiatives, and possible hurdles for any attempt to harmonise pension...

Comment: Leader - Taking liability for your investment.
January 17, 2005... Europe's nations are about as far apart from one another as they ever were when it comes to pension fund regulation. While Dutch practitioners wrestle with the implications of the new financial assessment framework, FTK, their UK...

Comment: World View - Discounting rationality.
January 17, 2005... Usually, towards the end of the year, there is time for reminiscence and profound pondering of the developments of the last year. We try to find out what we did wrong and generally make resolutions not to make the same mistakes again. Over...

Comment: Industry Voice - Swapping risk away.
January 17, 2005... Over the last few years UK pension funds have been forced by regulatory and accounting changes to focus more on matching the liabilities in their pension funds. These changes, along with a painful bear market in equities, have led numerous...

Comment: Mephisto.
January 17, 2005... Further to her foray into the world of Finnish workplace pension marketing at the end of last year, Mephisto noticed on a recent trip to Helsinki that all hell had broken loose when it comes to public information on pension reform. The...

EPN Investment Outlook Survey: Investors turn to stocks as growth expectations fall.
January 17, 2005... Investors remain optimistic about world growth prospects but the results of epn's latest quarterly institutional investor survey show that respondents are much less upbeat than they once were. The study, which took in 18 pension and asset...

Special Focus: The Netherlands - A clouded future.
January 17, 2005... Consultation on the new financial assessment framework (FTK) ended in December. Due for implementation from 2006, the FTK introduces one fundamental change that will not be altered. The fixed, 4% discount rate currently used to value all...

Special Focus: The Netherlands - A gradual pillar change is under way in the Netherlands.
January 17, 2005... Think pensions in the Netherlands and the second pillar usually comes to mind. Holland's practitioners are, after all, keen to promote their largely sector-based occupational retirement system which, they say, has matured over the last 50 years...

Special Focus: The Netherlands - Survival of the fittest.
January 17, 2005... "The heightened demands of Dutch society on smaller pension funds will make some of them disappear," Flip Klopper, a director of the Dutch National Bank (DNB), said recently. It appears his words are well timed, as there seems to be no let...

Special Focus: The Netherlands - Not a healthy increase.
January 17, 2005... Paying more for your pension is a fact of life today. Health workers are likely to see a rise from about 7% of salary in 2001 to 17.5% in 2006. For other medics, such as self-employed doctors, physiotherapists and vets, the hike could be...

Pension Fund Profile: Ilmarinen - Higher returns through equities.
January 17, 2005... Performance has improved markedly at Ilmarinen, the +14.69bn Finnish pension insurance company. In 2002 it pulled in returns of just -0.5% but after beefing up its equity exposure from 22.5% to 26.5% over the following 12 months the fund netted...

Pensions Snapshot: Germany.
January 17, 2005... December 1974 witnessed a milestone for German pensions. It was, after all, the month in which the tenets of the country's occupational pension legislation were passed in the Bundestag. Thirty years on, the German pension industry, while...

News: Dutch companies reject early retirement policy.
January 31, 2005... Most Dutch companies want their employees to retire between the ages of 60 and 62, according to a report prepared by KPMG - in contrast to government policy. The report says that companies want to look for an alternative to the increased...

News: New launch from Lehman.
January 31, 2005... Lehman Brothers is to launch a series of hedge fund indices, which will include both broad market benchmarks and various investible products. The series will be available to approved investors during the second quarter of this year. "The...

News: ATP `misinterprets advice' on rating system.
January 31, 2005... Denmark's ATP labour market supplementary pension fund mis-interpreted advice when it drew up ATP-Rating, its rating system for fund investment in the +5.8bn Folkeborsen scheme, the national supplementary pensions saving scheme that it...

News: Reforms give growth.
January 31, 2005... The Turkish market for private pension policies is experiencing rapid growth as a result of reforms in social security legislation. Giray Velioglu, managing director of Turkey's leading private pension provider YapY Kredi Emeklilik, told...

News: Study proposes mergers.
January 31, 2005... Pensioners drawing income from fund-based pension products would be between +400 and +6,000 better off if investment companies merged their European funds and passed cost savings to fund holders, according to a study prepared by the independent...

News: News in brief.
January 31, 2005... HEUBECK BUY-BACK Prof. Klaus Heubeck, the veteran German actuarial consultant, is to buy back the actuarial consultancy he sold to the software company FJH in 2003 for 570,000 shares in the company - then worth +10m - and an undisclosed...

News: BAM to expand in German market.
January 31, 2005... Baring Asset Management (BAM) aims to expand its position in Germany's institutional asset management market. "We want to grow our institutional business [in Germany] significantly this year. I am convinced we will succeed, given [the quality...

News: F&C appoints non-executive directors.
January 31, 2005... F&C Asset Management, formed out of the October 2004 merger of ISIS and F&C, has added Brian Larcombe and Philip Moore to its board. Mr Larcombe, who had retired, was previously chief executive officer at 3i Group until last year, while Mr...

News: People on the move.
January 31, 2005... - Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken (SEB) has appointed Annika Falkengren as its president and group chief executive from January next year. Until that time she joins as executive vice president and deputy group chief executive. Current president...

News: Folkeborsen architects profit from Swedish PPM mistakes.
January 31, 2005... Denmark believes it profited from the mistakes of its neighbour Sweden when it designed its +5.8bn Folkeborsen scheme. Bjarne Graven Larsen, chief investment officer of the ATP fund and one of Folkeborsen's architects, says one of the...

News: Hedge fund returns could disappoint.
January 31, 2005... Hedge funds are unlikely to repeat the returns of recent years on aggregate, according to a report by Greenwich Associates. It says a secular shift could be responsible for disappointing returns in 2004. Five year return expectations vary...

News: Pension liabilities outstrip asset growth.
January 31, 2005... The imbalance between pension liabilities and assets was highlighted last week with the publication of a report on the growth of institutional pension fund assets by the global consultant Watson Wyatt. Figures revealed the 10 per cent...

News: Hewitt and Bode in new consultancy joint venture.
January 31, 2005... The consultancy firm Hewitt Associates is moving into the German investment consultancy market through a new joint venture with Bode Grabner Beye, an actuarial and benefits consultancy. Hewitt's retirement and financial management will...

News: HGSC says smaller is better.
January 31, 2005... The Hoare Govett Smaller Company (HGSC) Index Study, carried out by ABN AMRO and London Business School, has found that small listed companies perform better on average than larger ones, both in the short and the long term. Professors...

News: Healthy returns for Dutch pension funds.
January 31, 2005... The saying "the bigger the better" seemed to apply to the performance of largest Dutch pension funds in 2004, at least when measured by the size of fund. Four of the five largest Dutch pension funds have published returns which range from 4.3...

News: Danish pension funds report good growth.
January 31, 2005... Several Danish pension funds have reported a substantial growth in their returns for 2004. Growth was robust across portfolios while equities performed exceptionally well. Claus Stampe, chief investment officer at the +5.5bn Pension...

News: Double-digit returns for UK pooled funds.
January 31, 2005... British balanced pooled funds turned in median returns of 6.2 per cent in the fourth quarter of last year, bringing up average yields for the whole of 2004 to 10.2 per cent, according to figures from Russell/Mellon. It is the second year...

Comment: Leader - Helping funds to compete.
January 31, 2005... The president of FEFSI, Dr Wolfgang Mansfeld, is unhappy that providers of fund management solutions did not get a look in during the negotiations on the EU occupational pension funds directive, which is to be implemented in national law by...

Comment: World View - The January effect.
January 31, 2005... There is always a lot of debate in the press and in research publications about the January effect. It is indisputable that over the last decades there has been some statistical relationship between the performance of equities throughout...

Comment: Industry Voice - On corporate governance.
January 31, 2005... The recent launch of the European Corporate Governance Forum on 20 January was the opportunity for Charlie McCreevy, new European commissioner in office for Internal Market and Services, to outline his early views on future EC activities in...

Comment: Mephisto.
January 31, 2005... Mephisto always did like a brave face and none were braver than the dozen or so high-ranking F&C staff that joined Mephisto and a group of Financial Times Business journalists for a drink last week - just a few days after a 25-page Morgan...

European High Yield Bonds: Will it be third year lucky?
January 31, 2005... The European high yield market delivered a second year of double-digit gains in 2004, rising 15 per cent over the year. Despite the intermittent pangs of nerves that have gripped the market, European high yield bonds have slowly risen up the...

Special Focus: ETFs and indices - End of the high season.
January 31, 2005... Exchange traded funds (ETFs) have been something of a phenomenon since the first vehicles appeared in Europe in April 2000. In the following 20 months some 70 ETFs popped up across the continent and assets under management grew to +4bn. By the...

Special Focus: ETFs and indices - Standard coup Norex tightens security.
January 31, 2005... Norex, the strategic alliance between the Nordic and Baltic stock exchanges, has announced it will use the Global Industry Classification Standard (GICS) as its official security classification standard. Jukka Ruuska, chairman of Norex,...

Special Focus: ETFs and indices - New best practice ranking.
January 31, 2005... In response to investor pressure for better and simpler tools with which to assess corporate governance practices, FTSE has teamed up with Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) to release the first phase of its Corporate Governance Index...

Special Focus: ETFs and indices - Indexing EU expansion.
January 31, 2005... May 2004 was an important period for investors looking to diversify their portfolios across Europe. The European Union's long-awaited eastward expansion brought ten new countries with some 75m inhabitants onto the radar screens of pension and...

Pension Fund Profile: SFB Groep - Waiting until the time is right.
January 31, 2005... One year after SFB's failed merger with Mn Services, Freek Vergunst, deputy director of the SFB investment department, says he prefers a measured approach to the future. Nevertheless, he does acknowledge that investments in new asset classes in...

Pensions Snapshot: Luxembourg.
January 31, 2005... A note of realism has crept into the Luxembourg pensions industry. Amid the hype accompanying the announcement of the new pan-European pensions directive were smaller voices quietly pointing out the fact that the EU Emperor had no clothes. ...