epn: European Pensions & Investment News articles from September 2008

epn: European Pensions & Investment News archives from September 2008

News: Keva doubles up on hedge funds.
September 8, 2008... Byline: Caroline Liinanki Finland Keva, the 22.9bn Finnish Local Government Pension Fund, has made its first direct hedge fund investment and doubled its allocation to the asset class. The scheme, which increased its hedge fund...

News: Irish funds fail to find a way out of the red.
September 8, 2008... Byline: Hjalmar Tjan Ireland Irish pension funds remain in the red by an average of 15.2 per cent for 2008, having lost 18.5 per cent of their value over the past year, according to Rubicon Investment Consulting. The firm's...

News: NBIM still wary of external managers' poor returns.
September 8, 2008... Byline: Caroline Liinanki Norway Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM) will continue to review its external managers, whose level of assets under management has reached an all-time low both in absolute and relative terms. ...

News: AFIC preps wealth-sharing proposals.
September 8, 2008... Byline: Spencer Anderson France The French Private Equity Association (AFIC) has revealed its intention to issue proposals on wealth sharing within the next two months. Private equity in France has been in uproar for the past few...

News in brief.
September 8, 2008... Belgian pension funds posted negative returns of an average of -7.8 per cent in the first half of 2008. The results, according to the Belgian Association of Pension Funds, amount to a 4 percentage point drop from the same period last year....

News: Aegon ponders infrastructure amid eastern Europe drive.
September 8, 2008... Byline: Spencer Anderson Netherlands Aegon's chief investment officer has indicated that infrastructure could enter the insurance firm's alternative investment universe. Jos Streppel, chief investment officer for the firm, told...

News: Euro investors must pry themselves away from CRAs, urges BlackRock.
September 8, 2008... Byline: Hjalmar Tjan BlackRock has advised European investors to concentrate more on their own research and avoid being overly reliant on rating agencies, but denied that it is seeking to supplant them. Michael Marks, head of...

News: Finnish supervisor slams heavy hedge fund exposure.
September 8, 2008... Byline: Caroline Liinanki Finland The Finnish Insurance Supervisory Authority has criticised the pension industry's large allocations to hedge funds in a recent paper that proposed regulatory changes. The authority was assigned by...

People News: JPMorgan weighs Dutch personnel expansion.
September 8, 2008... Byline: Spencer Anderson JPMorgan Asset Management has hinted that it will add staff to its Dutch institutional business. Brian Strange, vice-president and client adviser for European relationship management, told epn that if the...

People News: VER grows equity and real estate teams.
September 8, 2008... Byline: Caroline Liinanki Finland Valtion Elakerahasto (VER), the Finnish State Pension Fund, has recruited two new members of staff. Niklas Rosenqvist, who previously worked at Rettig Asset Management, has joined as an equity...

People News: People on the move.
September 8, 2008... PP Pension, the Swedish pension fund for journalists and media employees, is looking for a new managing director. Tomas Lindstrand, managing director of the fund for the past 10 years, is to retire at the start of 2009. PP Pension has had one...

News Analysis: Finns play it safe with huge equity cuts and a move into money markets.
September 8, 2008... Byline: Caroline Liinanki Finland Finnish investors are reducing risk in their investment portfolios and have become increasingly cautious during the first half of 2008. For the first time in five years, Finnish pension funds and...

Comment: Leader - US resilience leaves Euro funds awe-struck.
September 8, 2008... Byline: Spencer Anderson - Editor September is here, and Europe returns to work after some precious time away from what was a particularly tough first half. Funds across the Continent did poorly. Even large Dutch schemes, which typically...

Comment: Industry voice - Money in the bank?
September 8, 2008... Byline: Michael Burkie European pension providers are leaving some pensioners short of cash as a result of poor payments services. The opacity of the pension payments process, in most instances, obscures costs from the pensioner and causes...

Comment: Mephisto - Stamping out the UK property crunch.
September 8, 2008... What's the deal with the UK's stamp duty? You don't even get an actual stamp. Instead you just pay a whole lot of money. All in all, the UK's housing system is baffling to any foreigner. Stamp duty makes all buyers pay 1 per cent of the...

Fund Profile: Ireland - Construction workers' fund - Irish builders' fund stands firm on equities.
September 8, 2008... Byline: Spencer Anderson Like most other equity-heavy Irish pension funds, the 1bn construction workers' scheme took its hits in 2007 and 2008 and has offered little respite. The scheme's returns were down 5 per cent last year and so far...

Country Profile: Luxembourg.
September 8, 2008... Byline: Spencer Anderson With a population of only 480,000, Luxembourg can be forgiven for creating a pension system that is more designed for expatriates and multinational corporations than it is for its domestic population. Its...

Features: European CRAs - Regulating ratings - Getting the EU's obligations in order.
September 8, 2008... Byline: Gill Wadsworth There has been no shortage of finger-pointing in the fallout from the credit crunch, with governments, regulators and the financial services industry itself looking to apportion blame. And while very few protagonists...

The Specialist: Engagement overlay providers - Active ownership: the rules of engagement.
September 8, 2008... Byline: Raj Thamotheram and Shade Duffy While engagement overlay providers may offer a pragmatic solution to tackling the problem of inactive fund managers, do they offer the optimal strategy for concerned asset owners? There are good...

The Interview: AFIC - Pierre de Fouquet.
September 8, 2008... Byline: Spencer Anderson What is your opinion on the state of private equity in France today? Do you consider it to be in good condition or can improvements be made? At this stage, we don't have the figures from the first half of the...

News: Norwegian giant hurt by Lehman collapse.
September 22, 2008... Byline: Caroline Liinanki Norway The NKr1992bn (240bn) Norwegian Government Pension Fund - Global was one of the largest shareholders of Lehman Brothers and is likely to have suffered a massive blow following the investment bank's...

News: Dutch PFZW in new merger talks.
September 22, 2008... Byline: Spencer Anderson Netherlands PFZW is in discussions with the CNV Bedrijvenbond pension scheme about a merger. Peter Borgdorff, executive office director for the 88bn PFZW, formerly known as PGGM, said talks were...

News: AP7 to replicate hedge fund success.
September 22, 2008... Byline: Spencer Anderson Sweden Swedish AP7 is to expand its new hedge fund replication strategy and will appoint a new investment bank for the move next month. Richard Grottheim, the fund's executive vice-president, views...

News: ING Hungary fund greets new regulations with equity boost.
September 22, 2008... Byline: Spencer Anderson Hungary ING's mandatory Hungarian pension plan is increasing its equity allocation and examining potential investments in real estate and private equity. Borza Gabor, managing director of the 1.4bn fund...

News: Icelandic engineers spark real estate debut.
September 22, 2008... Byline: Caroline Liinanki Iceland Lifeyrissjodur verkfraedinga, the Icelandic Engineers' Pension Fund, has made its first foray into property. The IKr34bn (300m) fund has begun by investing in emerging market property and has made...

News: SAM set to expand in Asia and Europe after assets double.
September 22, 2008... Byline: Spencer Anderson Sustainable Asset Management (SAM) aims to grow its business in the Benelux region, the UK and Asia. Reto Ringger, founder and chief executive officer of the firm, told epn that it was in an expansion phase and...

News: New Star dumps Swiss Life after 'lie' turns relationship sour.
September 22, 2008... Byline: Hjalmar Tjan New Star's European value fund has dropped Swiss Life Rentenanstalt from its portfolio. "Management lied so I sold it," said fund manager Nick Sheridan. As of August, the Swiss provider of life insurance and...

News: Hermes EOS sets sights on Swiss and German markets.
September 22, 2008... Byline: Spencer Anderson Hermes Equity Ownership Services intends to expand its business in Switzerland and Germany and into other asset classes. Colin Melvin, chief executive officer of the firm, which specialises in offering...

People News: Schroders keeps up Nordic drive with senior hire.
September 22, 2008... Byline: Caroline Liinanki Schroder Property is continuing its push into the Nordic region by adding more senior staff from its competitor Aberdeen Property Investors. The firm, which aims to boost its Nordic business, is also looking...

People News: Axa Rosenberg to grow European equity staff.
September 22, 2008... Byline: Spencer Anderson Axa Rosenberg will continue adding staff to its European equities team. Simon Vanstone, European chief executive officer for the firm, said that while it had not added as many people as it had in recent years,...

People News: People on the move.
September 22, 2008... Sarah McPhee has been appointed chief executive of Swedish pension provider SPP and a group director at Storebrand. Ms McPhee was previously group director for the investment management of the Swedish pension provider AMF Pension. She will...

News Analysis: Consensus on Freddie and Fannie not enough to boost confidence.
September 22, 2008... Byline: Spencer Anderson US Last week, the two most talked about names were Fannie and Freddie and the news of their $200bn (141bn) government rescue had a grip on the financial world. Markets reacted positively to the news, with the...

Comment: Leader - Loose financial markets sink ships.
September 22, 2008... Byline: Spencer Anderson - Editor Investors have stopped asking themselves when the credit crunch will end and are now wondering who the next fatality will be. Hopes that the Fannie and Freddie rescue would be the big turnaround...

Comment: Industry voice - Indebted to eastern Europe.
September 22, 2008... Byline: Marcus Svedberg - Chief economist, East Capital Steadily rising interest rates on the back of strong inflationary pressure are causing concern across the world. Many central banks are facing a difficult dilemma in trying to fight...

Comment: Mephisto - The credit crunch in Lehman terms.
September 22, 2008... When will people finally admit we've got a problem on our hands? It seems that collapse after collapse, government intervention after government intervention, the analysts assure us that all is well. The system is robust. Corrections are...

Fund Profile: Finland - Equity-heavy Ilmarinen defiant despite losses.
September 22, 2008... Byline: Caroline Liinanki So far, this year has not been a good one for many investors. Finnish pension insurance company Ilmarinen is no exception, with the firm returning -4.9 per cent during the first six months of the year. Only Etera,...

Country Profile: Netherlands.
September 22, 2008... Byline: Hjalmar Tjan Despite disappointing half-year returns for the country's four major funds, Dutch pension market insiders have been quick to point out that the numbers could have been a lot worse. Adri Jansen, senior consultant at...

Features: Turkey - Private pension regulation - Package deal in Turkey props up private pensions.
September 22, 2008... Byline: Reeta Paakkinen The Turkish pension industry is gearing up for the effects of a new regulation that allows certain bodies with pension liabilities to invest their assets in the Turkish private pension system (BES). The new...

Features: Turkey - Foreign direct investment - Investing in Turkey: a prelude to integration.
September 22, 2008... Byline: Ipek Yezdani As one of the most watched emerging markets in the world, and with the prospect of EU membership, Turkey is eagerly anticipating the intake of even more European capital investment. It is no coincidence that the flow...

The Specialist : Far East property - Embracing eastern hot property.
September 22, 2008... Byline: Malcolm Naish It will come as no surprise to institutional investors that European pension funds are becoming increasingly stretched. Liabilities are rising as the pressures of an ageing population mean fewer people are...

Economics: Solvency II - Perplexed pensions hit the Solvency II crossroads.
September 22, 2008... Byline: Vicken Berberian - Research associate at Bfinance The European Solvency II framework directive has reached a critical juncture on its way to becoming regulation by 2012. It was initially introduced to revise risk management and...