Pensions Week articles from June 2007

Pensions Week archives from June 2007

News: Credit Suisse staff exits spoil big deal.
June 4, 2007... Byline: Gill Wadsworth The departure of key staff at Credit Suisse has cost it a fixed income brief with a GBP540m London local authority pension fund. The Lambeth scheme chose Credit Suisse to run a GBP60m bond mandate from a...

News: Mercer suffers second loss to rival Deloitte.
June 4, 2007... Byline: Gill Wadsworth Mercer Investment Consulting has lost a senior investment consultant to rival Deloitte just two months after director Andy Green defected. Alistair Sutherland, senior investment consultant at Mercer, joins...

This Week: This is the modern world.
June 4, 2007... The importance of independence has been integral to pension funds' investment advice since inception. Trustees' reliance on their advisers for clear unbiased direction on asset allocation and fund management provided the basis for portfolio...

News: Outsourcing fund strategy bodes well for diversity.
June 4, 2007... Byline: Gill Wadsworth A trend of outsourcing a pension scheme's entire investment strategy to external consultants could result in allocations to alternative asset classes soaring, industry players claimed. According to Old Mutual...

News: Shell settlement meets opposition.
June 4, 2007... Byline: Ryan Harrison A US law firm has challenged the recent Royal Dutch Shell out of court settlement, urging UK pension funds to question if the payout sufficiently covered their damages. Labaton Sucharow and Rudoff warned schemes...

News: Hewitt turns staff exits and hires to advantage.
June 4, 2007... Byline: Gill Wadsworth Hewitt Associates has embarked on a reversal of the staff exodus in which it lost several key investment consultants, with the announcement five new hires. After a miserable run at the start of 2007 that included...

News: Regulator admits to invoicing error.
June 4, 2007... The Pensions Regulator has come under fire for an administrative error that resulted in a number of schemes facing incorrect levy fees, according to consultants. The regulator has issued invoices for the administration levy for the year...

News in Brief.
June 4, 2007... DC scheme members are losing GBP225m in pension benefits by failing to take advantage of matching contributions offered by their employers, according to Xafinity Consulting. Nearly 40% of members, particularly younger ones, ignored this...

News: PPF plans receive mixed response from consultants.
June 4, 2007... Byline: Christine Senior The Pension Protection Fund (PPF) has set out its priorities for 2007-2008 with a focus on confidence building, risk management and encouraging strong levels of scheme funding. The PPF's top priorities are...

News: Investment not the only scheme risk.
June 4, 2007... Byline: Ryan Harrison Trustees must avoid becoming blinkered by their investment risks and instead consider the threat of escalating liabilities and poor defined contribution (DC) administration, pensions experts will warn. Speaking at...

News: Schemes will suffer from PAs system.
June 4, 2007... Byline: Christine Senior Employers fear government reforms will lead to a levelling down of pension contributions, more scheme closures and a 'pension apartheid'. A survey from the Association of Consulting Actuaries (ACA), which...

News: Devon scheme invests in infrastructure fund.
June 4, 2007... Byline: Christine Senior The GBP2.1bn Devon County Council pension fund will make its first foray in alternative assets with a GBP25m investment in UBS' forthcoming infrastructure fund. The fund is likely to invest in toll roads and...

News: Institutional success in 2006 for SWIP.
June 4, 2007... Byline: Ryan Harrison Scottish Widows Investment Partnership (SWIP) saw its institutional assets soar by 22% in 2006. The fund manager, which pulled in GBP1.3bn of new assets last year, said the growth was down to its bottom-up...

News in Brief.
June 4, 2007... Watson Wyatt has secured a consultancy mandate to handle the selection and monitoring of insurance underwriter Chaucer's hedge fund investments. Roger Boulton, senior investment consultant at Watson Wyatt, said: "Successful hedge fund...

News: Private equity linked to scheme wind-ups.
June 4, 2007... Byline: Ryan Harrison Private equity buyouts are responsible for over 100 UK pension scheme defaults in recent years, the GMB union will allege at an upcoming inquiry into the industry. The House of Commons Treasury Committee will hear...

News: Experts urge schemes to snap up buyout deals.
June 4, 2007... Byline: Gill Wadsworth Pension schemes procrastinating over the cost of bulk buyout could miss out on the best deals, industry insiders claimed. Speaking at the Pensions Week bulk buyout roundtable, Edmund Truell, group chief...

News: USS doubles Fprop's mandate to GBP100m.
June 4, 2007... Byline: Ryan Harrison First Property Group (Fprop) has sealed a successful start to the year and doubled its business by securing a second brief with one of the UK's largest pension funds. The GBP29bn Universities Superannuation...

News: Standard Life AGM sees union protest.
June 4, 2007... Byline: Christine Senior Standard Life has received a bloody nose at its first annual meeting as a listed company as unions protested at the decision to scrap its final salary scheme. Unite, a workers group formed from Amicus and T&G...

News: Rowanmoor stands firm over in specie transfers.
June 4, 2007... Byline: Christine Senior Rowanmoor Pensions is resolute in offering in specie transfers to its small self-administered schemes (SSAS), despite many providers temporarily suspending the facility. A number of SSAS and self-invested...

News: 75% swap pension fund for property.
June 4, 2007... Byline: Ryan Harrison Three-quarters of UK workers would ditch their pension savings to fund their retirement through investments in the property market, a survey revealed. Property analyst www.yourpropertyclub.com found more than half...

Current Affairs: Digging Deeper.
June 4, 2007... Byline: Ryan Harrison To quench the growing thirst for high alpha mandates, global asset managers have showered the UK pensions market with their 130/30 strategies over recent months. Trustees must now be convinced long-only experts can...

Current Affairs: Private equity - boom or bubble?
June 4, 2007... Byline: Lindsay Tomlinson Private equity - is it the end of the world or a storm in a teacup? The last few months has seen both extraordinary investment activity by private equity investors and extraordinary political interest in...

The Insider: Personal View - Governance progress is welcomed, but without additional assessment.
June 4, 2007... Byline: Paul Trickett The principles-based approach for improving governance and changing behaviour in the pensions industry has been effective during the past six years. This is, in part, due to the impetus provided by the Myners review...

The Insider: Don't keep members in the dark.
June 4, 2007... Byline: Billy Burrows Members of money purchase schemes have more choice over their annuity and drawdown options, but many are still in the dark about which options are available to them. For most members there is little choice other...

Industry Watch: Governance - The limited pool of CEO talent.
June 4, 2007... Byline: Tom Powdrill A few weeks ago we looked at the typical length of time a chief executive spends on the board of the UK's biggest companies. PIRC's data shows that many chief executives of the FTSE 100 have actually been in their...

Industry Watch: Notice Board - NAPF upcoming conferences and seminars.
June 4, 2007... NAPF Autumn Conference 2007 Developing DC - today, tomorrow and 2012 Tuesday October 16, One Great George Street, London Join senior government officials, policy advisers and industry experts at the NAPF's second...

Industry Watch: Ombudsman.
June 4, 2007... Seeing more An arresting advertisement caught my attention as I waited at Bank station one evening last week. It said this: "The more you see of someone, the more of someone you see." The next line explained all. "You notice a glint...

Pensions Workout - 130/30 an intermediate guide to 130/30 investment strategies.
June 4, 2007... In most discussions of 130/30 strategies, shorting grabs the limelight. This is understandable; including short positions in core equity portfolios is novel, and investors are right to be cautious about whether specific investment managers can...

Special Focus: Introduction.
June 4, 2007... Exchange traded funds are enjoying a boom in the UK institutional market as their relative simplicity and diversification benefits find favour with pension trustees. Yet while money is flowing into ETFs, there are still gaps in...

Special Focus: The big bang.
June 4, 2007... Byline: Ceri Jones Last year, the most actively traded securities on the US stock exchanges were not household names or even single companies, they were the exchange traded funds mirroring the S&P 500, the Nasdaq 100 and the Russell 2000...

Special Focus: Bespoke Model.
June 4, 2007... Exchange traded funds (ETFs) have grown in popularity over recent years and are fast becoming part of the investment mainstream. There are now over 300 ETFs available on a multitude of indices, ranging from straightforward country index...

PIPA Awards: Industry is the winner at PIPA.
June 4, 2007... Bigger than Eurovision and better than Christmas, is one way you might describe the Pension and Investment Provider Awards 2007. In years to come, you will undoubtedly meet people who claimed to be there, but with a select group of 320...

Roundtable.(Discussion)
June 4, 2007... Peter Tompkins: It is the trustees who have to make that investment decision, but the interested parties also include the employer and the members. There is nothing worse for an employer than having arranged some transaction that ultimately...

On the Move: Aegon rebuilds its institutional team.
June 4, 2007... Aegon Asset Management's hiring spree has continued unabated with the appointment of Anne Harrison as head of performance; the firm's latest attempt to repair a spate of personnel defections. Harrison joins from Fidelity Investments, where...

On the Move: Going Places - McKelvey moves to equities at Insight.
June 4, 2007... Insight Investment has boosted its equity team with the appointment of Matthew McKelvey as head of equity product management. Joining from Fidelity International, McKelvey reports to head of equities, Sandy Black (pic), and will be...

On the Move: Going Places - McMillen hire boosts back office at Watson Wyatt.
June 4, 2007... Watson Wyatt has ramped up its back office operation with the appointment of Mike McMillen (pic), as senior consultant. He joins the sales and marketing team for the firm's technology and administration solutions practice, after working as...

News: JLT, Xafinity and Capita in PA face-off.
June 11, 2007... Byline: Gill Wadsworth Three of the UK's largest third-party administrators are battling it out to secure the back office contract for the government's national pension savings scheme. Jardine Lloyd Thompson (JLT), Xafinity and Capita...

News: Defection hits Mercer.
June 11, 2007... Byline: Gill Wadsworth An associate at Mercer Investment Consulting has defected to SEI Investments defined contribution (DC) team. Ashish Kapur, a member of Mercer's DC team, is leaving the consultancy to take over the development of...

This Week: The proof will be in the voting.
June 11, 2007... A couple of weeks ago I wrote about how the safety of the nation's pension schemes lay in the hands of the Lords and that, so far, they'd done a pretty good job of identifying the key issues and taking the appropriate action. Last week...

News: Means-testing cut from pensions bill.
June 11, 2007... Byline: Hannah Williams Radical alterations to the pensions bill that block the use of means-testing in personal accounts were dropped at the eleventh hour causing widespread industry dismay. Baroness Hollis, a former minister at the...

News: Lords veto Labour's power to choose.
June 11, 2007... Byline: Ryan Harrison The House of Lords has shot down government hopes of appointing the chairman of the proposed personal accounts delivery authority. Plans to give the secretary of state for work and pensions, currently John Hutton,...

News: Compensation increase depends on Labour vote.
June 11, 2007... Byline: Gill Wadsworth Hope for adequate compensation for defunct occupational pension schemes rests squarely with Labour MPs, pension campaigners claimed. Following an amendment to the pensions bill tabled by the House of Lords last...

News: DWP lifts protected rights restriction.
June 11, 2007... Byline: Hannah Williams Rigid restrictions on the investment of protected rights funds have been removed by the House of Lords to allow savers greater flexibility. Lord Mackenzie of Luton, the government's minister for the Department...

News in Brief.
June 11, 2007... Bramdean Asset Management has launched a fund-of-funds product to harness the growing appetite for diversification from pension funds. The alternative fund boasts, among other things, a low correlation to traditional asset classes and...

News: Specialists urge trustees to manage investment risk.
June 11, 2007... Byline: Ryan Harrison Hedging out inflation and interest rate risk must not overshadow investment risk in a liability-driven investment (LDI) strategy, specialists have warned trustees. Gareth Derbyshire, managing director at Lehman...

News: Public listing could impact ISS' integrity.
June 11, 2007... Byline: Hannah Williams The independence of proxy-advisory firm Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) has been thrown into doubt foll-owing changes in company ownership. Institutional investors in the UK are concerned plans for...

News: Insolvency claims trigger guidance.
June 11, 2007... Byline: Ryan Harrison The Pensions Regulator has been forced to issue renewed guidance for trustees after the GMB union named 96 insolvent pension funds it claimed were linked to private equity activity. The union said 58 pension...

News: Council to manage NEC fund deficit.
June 11, 2007... Byline: Ryan Harrison Birmingham City Council will guarantee the pension fund of the National Exhibition Centre (NEC), which is currently saddled with a GBP16.4m deficit. The council promised to manage the "consequences of the pension...

News in Brief.
June 11, 2007... State Street Corporation has launched an online performance tool to help pension schemes monitor property portfolios. The web-based service includes online performance analytics and risk assessment tools to enable investors to evaluate...

News: Regulation bodies must work together.
June 11, 2007... Byline: Hannah Williams The Financial Services Authority and the Pensions Regulator must work more closely when governing defined contribution (DC) schemes, according to Paul Thornton's review of pension institutions. The long-awaited...

News: Mandate win for State Street despite poor performance.
June 11, 2007... Byline: Ryan Harrison State Street has bagged a GBP300m custody mandate for the Somerfield pension scheme, despite slipping up in global rankings. The Somerfield deal means State Street will supply fund accounting, independent swaps...

News: LDI meaning gets lost in translation.
June 11, 2007... Byline: Ryan Harrison UK pension funds are out of sync with their international counterparts on the definition of liability-driven investment (LDI), research has revealed. A survey by SEI found a quarter of UK respondents beli-eved...

News: Infrastructure poses wide risk spectrum.
June 11, 2007... Byline: Ryan Harrison Trustees wanting to capitalise on infrastructure investment must realise it offers a 'broad church' of risk and reward, sector experts said. As well as offering pension schemes a solid, sustainable income,...

News: Kent fund invests in unconstrained management style.
June 11, 2007... Byline: Ryan Harrison The GBP2.5bn Kent County Council pension fund has continued to back investment freedom for fund managers by appointing Invesco Perpetual for an unconstrained UK equity mandate. Nick Vickers, head of financial...

News: Pooled UK equities beat fund peers.
June 11, 2007... Byline: Ryan Harrison Pooled UK equity funds have outstripped their hedge fund counterparts for the last three years to March 2007. Mellon Analytical Solutions (MAS) reported a median return of 8.3% for pooled fund-of-hedge funds,...

Current Affairs: Uphill battle.
June 11, 2007... Byline: Hannah Williams As trustee desks continue to buckle under the strain of mounting legislation, the chasm between pension scheme resources and requirements is gaping ever wider, and nowhere is the burden felt more acutely than the...

Current Affairs: Taking the system to the extremes.
June 11, 2007... Taking the system to the extremes Last weekend I was driving from Leeds to Manchester on the M62. Halfway along, in the midst of the Pennines, there's a sign marking the "highest motorway point in England" reaching an impressive 1,221...

The Insider: Personal View - Creating a targeted solution to solve the pensions problems of the past.
June 11, 2007... Rebuilding confidence in the UK's pension system will be one of the great challenges facing the next government. We all know the background to the crisis of confidence in pension saving, as millions of people in the private sector wake up to...

The Insider: Technical View - Meeting the dual ETF challenge.
June 11, 2007... Byline: Tony O'Brien Exchange traded funds (ETFs) are hot again. After the honeymoon period in Europe in the early noughties, interest seemed to wane as the growth in assets under management stuttered and the variety of ETF products seemed...

Industry Watch: Governance - Should investors be in the driving seat?
June 11, 2007... Byline: Tom Powdrill When people talk about governance in the capital markets, you can be sure that nine times out of 10 they will be referring to corporate governance - the way companies are run. But more recently there has been an...

Industry Watch: View from the Bridge.
June 11, 2007... Byline: Norman Russell Cheap, cheerful, speedy Three weeks ago I wrote about the announcement that Tony King would be moving from the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) to become the new Pensions Ombudsman (PO) later this year. Those...

Industry Watch: Notice Board - NAPF raising the pensions profile.
June 11, 2007... PensionsForce: Helping people to help themsleves Earlier this year Otto Thoresen, chief executive officer of Aegon UK, was tasked by the government to examine the feasibility of delivering a national approach to generic financial...

Pensions Workout.
June 11, 2007... The marketing gurus of the investment industry love numbers - in moderation. A good number, well placed, can lend an air of authority which might loosely be described as the "man in the white coat effect". What, then, is one to make of labels...

On the Move: Barings in double executive capture.
June 11, 2007... Byline: Ryan Harrison Baring Asset Management has secured two senior hires across its global institutional and fund development business. Jonathan Cunningham (pic) joins the firm as head of international institutional business, while...

On the Move: Going Places.
June 11, 2007... Brassett in Mercer move Mercer Human Resource Consulting has recruited Geraldine Brassett as a principal from MNPA, in what will be the firm's second major departure in as many weeks. Brassett will work within Mercer's benefits...

On the Move: Top 4 Moves.
June 11, 2007... 01 - Anne Harrison: OLD Fidelity Investments, associate director and head of performance and investment statistics NEW Aegon Asset Management, head of performance Tel: 0131 5492859 02 - Matthew McKelvey: OLD Fidelity International,...

On the Move: The Number.
June 11, 2007... 76%: Percentage of employers in the United Kingdom that believe the government's pension reform package will actually accelerate scheme closures

News: WHSmith CEO refutes claims of negligence.
June 18, 2007... Byline: Ryan Harrison WHSmith's chief executive has denied she was irresponsible to close the firm's final salary pension scheme and maintained the company had no other choice, Pensions Week can reveal. In leaked documents from a...

News: Ross quits Bfinance.
June 18, 2007... Bfinance has lost its managing director to Chicago-based investment manager William Blair, marking the consultant's second key departure in a month. Tom Ross has taken up the role of head of European institutional distribution and will be...

News: This Week - Clarity and communication.
June 18, 2007... Byline: Gill Wadsworth The issue of contribution caps for personal accounts has dominated the press following the government's decision to set the limit at GBP3,600. However, we've got to be careful this issue does not obfuscate the...

News: MPs question Remploy pensions security.
June 18, 2007... Byline: Ryan Harrison Concerns have been raised in the House of Commons over the security of pensions at disabled workers' employer Remploy. The firm, which is the largest employer of disabled people in the UK, is currently in...

News: Pension trustees turn to PR firms.
June 18, 2007... Byline: Ryan Harrison Corporate PR firms are set to cash in on a swell of trustees hiring dedicated press teams to fight their corner during negotiations on future funding and merger and acquisitions (M&A) activity. During the recent...

News: Lib Dems shunned on personal accounts.
June 18, 2007... Byline: Gill Wadsworth Broad support for the government's personal account plans has been marred by a war of words from political parties. In spite of the government's claims it is looking for cross-party consensus on the proposed...

News: Industry salutes contribution cap.
June 18, 2007... Byline: Hannah Williams The government's decision to set an annual contribution cap of GBP3,600 has been met with support across the industry. Existing providers said the decision was a firm foundation for the fund's development and...

News in Brief.
June 18, 2007... Capita Hartshead has responded to the gap in the smaller pension fund market by launching a bundled pension service. The firm will provide actuarial and investment advice along with administration services tailored to individual scheme needs....

News: Industry divided over basis for DC.
June 18, 2007... Byline: Gill Wadsworth The industry is locked in conflict over the most valid basis for defined contribution (DC) schemes, Pensions Week research revealed. According to the first annual PW DC survey, pensions professionals are divided...

News: Governance leaves many smaller schemes feeling the heat.
June 18, 2007... Byline: Hannah Williams The majority of UK pension funds believe legislation around scheme governance has heaped an added pressure onto smaller schemes. The second Pensions Week Trusty 30 survey found 91% of funds felt recent...

News: Surpluses should be freed up.
June 18, 2007... Byline: Gill Wadsworth Companies should set up reservoir funds to prevent resources becoming unnecessarily trapped in pension surpluses, consultants claimed. Speaking at the Pensions Week liability-driven investment (LDI) conference...

News: ASP charges could bankrupt recipients.
June 18, 2007... Byline: Hannah Williams Beneficiaries of inherited pension funds could be faced with massive tax bills - decades before receiving their bequests, providers have warned. New rules introduced in the Finance Act 2007 mean funds left...

News: Manager voting to be viewed online.
June 18, 2007... Byline: Ryan Harrison Pension funds can tap into the voting habits of their fund managers, thanks to a website from the Trades Union Congress (TUC). Following previous failed attempts, the TUC's site allows schemes full access to how...

News in Brief.
June 18, 2007... SGAM Alternative Investments has offered UK pension funds access to US hedge fund specialists with the launch of its AI Equity Fund. The fund offers institutional investors access to hedge fund managers overseeing long-only or long-biased...

News: Boots deficit crisis continues.
June 18, 2007... Byline: Ryan Harrison MPs have told private equity house Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (KKR) that its dithering on the final funding plan for the Boots pension scheme will jeopardise the benefits of the 66,710 members. An early day motion...

News: Women unprepared for retirement.
June 18, 2007... Byline: Ryan Harrison The Conservatives have claimed 6.7 million women in Britain are not saving for their retirement, nearly 400,000 more than five years ago. Research by Maria Miller, shadow minister for work and pensions, found...

News: Schroders cashes in on demand for real estate.
June 18, 2007... Byline: Ryan Harrison Schroders Property Investment Management has capitalised on a continued appetite from the UK local authority market for real estate with two property multi-manager mandates worth GBP45m. The Shetland Islands...