Pensions Week articles from September 2004

Pensions Week archives from September 2004

News: TUC wants compulsion but only to good schemes.
September 6, 2004... The Trade Unions Congress (TUC) is set to ignite the debate on pensions compulsion by calling for combined employer/employee contributions of 15% minimum to pension funds. At its annual conference next week, the TUC will debate a report by...

News: ABI tenders for investment monitor.
September 6, 2004... The Association of British Insurers (ABI) has put out to tender for an independent monitoring company to enable it to continue its monitoring of investment classifications for life and pension funds. Through its investment classification...

News: Newham wants US firm to probe for fraud.
September 6, 2004... The London Borough of Newham pension scheme is looking to sign up with US- based class action law firm Millberg Weiss to monitor the fund's shareholdings to avoid getting caught up in fraud cases. Councillor John Saunders, told PW: "We are...

News: Lack of information on the FAS causes woe among trustees.
September 6, 2004... The pensions regulator is urging trustees of unfunded pension funds to advance scheme wind-ups so members do not lose out on possible assistance from the government's Financial Assistance Scheme (FAS). The Occupational Pensions Regulatory...

News: Martin Currie to handle oe100m in equities for SEI.
September 6, 2004... Multi-manager SEI has handed at least GBP100m in UK active equities to Scottish investment house Martin Currie. The Edinburgh-based firm will handle the momentum category for SEI's UK equity offering, starting with the GBP100m. The win...

News: Pension crisis worsens as many consider compulsion.
September 6, 2004... Shadow secretary of state for work and pensions, David Willetts MP, said the YouGov poll recently published by the Association of British Insurers showed that the pensions crisis has become so serious that people are willing to contemplate...

News: Lunchtime seminars on pensions education.
September 6, 2004... Axa and FT Business are to run four lunchtime seminars for pension advisers and consultants on the need for pensions education for employees, employers and the state. The seminars will be held at: Birmingham, September 15; Manchester,...

News: Federal-Mogul refuses to make further payments into T&N fund.
September 6, 2004... Federal-Mogul, the US parent company of UK engineering firm Turner & Newall, told workers that there would be no further payments to the UK pension fund in a meeting last week. The meeting took place after the scheme trustees rejected...

News: oe6.5bn mandate for Investment Solutions.
September 6, 2004... Investment Solutions, an Alexander Forbes subsidiary, has scooped a GBP6.5bn mandate from pharmaceutical technology company West Pharmaceuticals. The brief is to manage the assets of the firm's defined benefit pension scheme, which remains...

News: Japanese smaller companies still a viable investment option.
September 6, 2004... Institutions should not be scared off of Japanese smaller companies by the recent turbulent market, according to Scottish Widows Investment Partnership (Swip). Rather, Chisako Hardie, Japanese smaller companies fund manager at Swip,...

News: Pointon appointed by MW.
September 6, 2004... The MW self-invested personal pension (Sipp) plan has appointed Pointon York as a third-party administrator. Pointon York Sipp Solutions will work with specialist consultancy and trustee company MW Pensions, focusing on the corporate and...

News: Schroder to manage oe60m specialist mandate for ABPG.
September 6, 2004... The Associated British Ports Group pension scheme has appointed Schroder Investment Management to manage a GBP60m specialist UK equity mandate. The objective will be to outperform the FTSE All Share Index by 2% a year. The Associated...

News: Mothercare axes three equity managers.
September 6, 2004... The Mothercare pension fund had dropped three equity managers following a review. Merrill Lynch Investment Managers, SG Asset Management and Legal & General Investment Management have been dropped. The managers have been replaced with...

News: ABI report shows many favour compulsory pension savings.
September 6, 2004... British consumers are starting to save more, with a 4% rise in life and pensions business for the first half of this year compared with the same period in 2003. The Association of British Insurers (ABI) figures come hot on the heels of...

News: BAM urges schemes to stick with fixed income.
September 6, 2004... Pension schemes should stick with fixed income despite investor caution over inflation, Baring Asset Management (BAM) said last week. George Harvey, head of sales, business development and client service at BAM in London, conceded: "We are...

News: Edinburgh Small Companies Trust goes through major restructuring process.
September 6, 2004... The Edinburgh Small Companies Trust underperformed the index over the year to June 2004, blaming the costs of restructuring the investment process of its new manager. Net asset value of the company went up by 22.2% over the 12 months,...

News: Beware of inept admin providers.
September 6, 2004... Sponsors and trustees should beware of incompetent administration providers, according to Watson Wyatt's head of administration consulting. Allan Course cited the administrators of one scheme who caused a scheme to overpay a pensioner...

News: Events.
September 6, 2004... Trustee training courses Consultant Watson Wyatt is running a series of trustee training courses this autumn. The training is designed for both trustees and finance/HR executives and will cover defined benefit pensions, defined...

News: Equitable Life faces cost of delays.
September 6, 2004... The pensions ombudsman has directed the Equitable Life to refund one of its members part of an exit penalty after the firm applied a higher rate following delays in a transfer request. The member - Mr Cherry - took his complaint to the...

News: FSA calls for a review of policies by chief executives.
September 6, 2004... The Financial Services Authority (FSA) has written to chief executives of all life insurance firms and friendly societies setting out the results of its review of processes, systems and controls for with-profits insurance contracts. The...

News: Ombudsman watch.
September 6, 2004... Human rights There is a suggestion from some quarters that we are suffering from a plague of rights and, what is worse, human rights. This week's case features sections four and six of the Human Rights Act 1998, peaceful enjoyment of...

News: Fidelity hires Harris in bid to boost UK DB arm.
September 6, 2004... Fidelity Investments has poached First State Investments' Martin Harris in a bid to boost its GBP20bn UK defined benefits (DB) arm. Harris, currently head of UK institutional at First State and veteran of Gartmore Investment Management...

News: Comino software best fit for Hymans.
September 6, 2004... Comino has been picked to provide third party administration software for pensions consultants and actuaries Hymans Robertson. Hymans will use Comino's Universal Pensions Management (UPM) software to administer systems, following a review...

News: Benchmark - Strategic allocation.
September 6, 2004... The current main event in defined benefit (DB) pension investing is strategic asset allocation. This is the one area of pension fund investing that can make or break the sponsoring employer. For this reason, it is attracting considerable...

Governance watch: Dixons, Northgate seek shareholder approval at AGMs.
September 6, 2004... Dixons Group is holding its annual general meeting (AGM) this week (8 September). The company has restructured its board in the light of the revised Combined Code. It now comprises a chairman, three executive directors and four independent...

Spotlight: Learning to wield the power of the trustees.
September 6, 2004... The WH Smith deal highlighted the importance of looking at scheme rules to see what powers trustees have. Under the pensions bill, any unilateral powers trustees have to wind the scheme up - and trigger a substantial debt on the employer - will...

Opinion: Leader - Compulsion won't work on its own.
September 6, 2004... The political debate will take on a more urgent tone over the next few months, as the rival parties jostle for position ahead of the next election. And pensions will increasingly feature as an issue, given the growing awareness of how many...

Opinion: Personal view - Now, when you say guarantee, what do you really mean?
September 6, 2004... The Financial Services Authority (FSA) shares the blame for the current occupational pension crisis by wrongly telling employees that their pensions were guaranteed. However, the FSA is refusing to adopt the same standards of accuracy and...

Opinion: Inside view - Navigating the stormy seas of investing in hedge funds.
September 6, 2004... The recent popularity of hedge funds has seen the assets under management (AUM) rise from an estimated $488bn in 2000, to $818bn by end of 2003, according to Hedge Funds Research Inc. It is the speed and size of this growth which is leading...

Special Focus: Balanced Management - Intro.
September 6, 2004... Balanced management has become decidedly unfashionable among UK pension schemes since the disastrous impact of the three-year bear markets, but it appears to be enjoying a renaissance thanks to a major rethink by fund managers. New...

Special Focus: Balanced Management - Just what is meant by new balanced management?
September 6, 2004... New balanced management is a term increasingly heard in pension scheme boardrooms. Yet there are a number of interpretations of this asset allocation strategy and a variety of approaches to implementing it. The most pressing issue is whether...

Special Focus: Balanced Management - Target return investing: the rebirth of balanced management.
September 6, 2004... The approach to balanced management traditionally used by pension fund managers has recently been much maligned. Particular criticism lies at the inadequacy of the framework and understanding of true investment risk relative to the liabilities...

Special Focus: Balanced Management - Company profile - Merrill Lynch Investment Managers.
September 6, 2004... Background Merrill Lynch Investment Managers (MLIM) is the fund management arm of Merrill Lynch & Co Inc - one of the world's leading financial services providers. With more than 600 investment professionals strategically located around...

People on the move: Sarkar appointed as actuarial director at HSBC.
September 6, 2004... HSBC Actuaries and Consultants has expanded its team with the appointment of Jonathan Sarkar as actuarial director. Sarkar will act as appointed scheme actuary and consultant to a number of HSBC's clients. He will also assume responsibility...

People on the move: Actuarial Life Board appoints new chairman and deputy chairman.
September 6, 2004... The Life Board of the Actuarial Profession has appointed a new chairman and a deputy chairman, effective from the 2004-2005 session which begins this month. Nigel Masters has taken over from John Hylands as chairman. Adrian Eastwood...

People on the move: Reeve to aid JLT's focus on new and current clients.
September 6, 2004... Jardine Lloyd Thompson (JLT) has appointed John Reeve as client director for its Exeter, Bristol and Reading offices. Reeve joins from Hazell Carr where he was chief operating officer. He joins with over 20 years experience in the pensions...

News Just In... : Q2 shows steady returns for schemes.
September 6, 2004... Pension funds saw a slight increase in assets in the second quarter of this year, of 1.1%, according to the latest survey results from the WM Company. Average pension fund performance, based on two-thirds of UK schemes, was steady if...

News: SBJ expands employee benefits business with MFS.
September 6, 2004... Consulting and insurance firm SBJ Group has acquired the business of Miller Financial Services (MFS), subsidiary company of Miller Insurance Services, for an undisclosed sum. The MFS business will be incorporated into SBJ's subsidiary SBJ...

News: Fire service heeds call for equality.
September 13, 2004... Part-time firefighters are to be given access to the service's pension scheme as of this week as part of a modernisation initiative by the Fire and Rescue Service. Firefighters who were previously forced to retire through ill-health when...

News: Aon restructure attempts to mirror its maturing client base.
September 13, 2004... Aon Consulting is restructuring its investment practice in a bid to grow the business and keep up with a maturing pension fund client base. The firm is yet to reveal exact details of the restructure but has said that it will relocate teams...

News: NAPF claims win over consultants.
September 13, 2004... The National Association of Pension Funds (NAPF) claimed it had beaten consultants in the battle to clear up confusion over sweeping changes to the tax regime. The NAPF has issued a guide to assist the pensions industry in dealing with the...

News: DWP issues consultation paper drafting regulations on wind-ups.
September 13, 2004... The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has issued a consultation paper on draft regulations on winding-up and transfer values, that aims to make insolvent employers liable to fund a scheme on a full buy-out basis on wind- up, as solvent...

News: Bosses enjoy luxury pensions.
September 13, 2004... Bosses at UK companies are enjoying luxury pensions worth up to 50 times more than most staff pensions despite being called on to set an example by the Confederation of British Industry (CBI). Many are still enjoying a no-risk pension...

News: Willetts accuses Wicks of misleading people over PPF.
September 13, 2004... Shadow pensions secretary David Willetts accused pensions minister Malcolm Wicks of being in danger of misleading people over the Pension Protection Fund (PPF). He accused Wicks of giving the impression that existing pensioners were...

News: ABI claim women at risk of facing poverty in retirement.
September 13, 2004... The majority of women are at serious risk of facing poverty in retirement, the Association of British Insurers (ABI) warned. A report by the ABI found 4.5 million working women do not save enough and another 4.5 million women are not saving...

News: Kas has rise in net profits.
September 13, 2004... Kas Bank's interim figures show that net profit rose by 7% to GBP6m, a decent showing following a fairly torrid 2003. Total income in the first half of 2004 amounted to GBP37.3m, marginally higher than for the same period in 2003 but...

News: Specialist boutiques celebrate triumph over larger competition.
September 13, 2004... Specialist UK equity boutiques are claiming triumph over their larger fund management counterparts after Mirabaud Investment Management and Majedie Asset Management reported assets under management (AUM) of GBP1bn and GBP750m respectively. ...

News: Pensions carded as the major cause of workplace unrest.
September 13, 2004... Pensions are a major cause of workplace unrest, an industrial relations survey has found. Law firm DLA found that trade unions rated pensions more highly as a cause of industrial unrest than employers did. Unions placed pensions issues as...

News: Adequate choice in arranging best annuity not offered.
September 13, 2004... Pension scheme members are not being offered adequate choice or guidance in arranging the best annuity, pensions consultant Aspen said. A survey of the UK's top 1,000 pension schemes revealed that half of the schemes were not providing the...

News: Morley expands pooled pensions fund range.
September 13, 2004... Morley Fund Management is to add a high alpha corporate bond fund to its pooled pension fund range. The aggressively managed high alpha fund is set for launch on 1 October. The fund will have an out-performance target of 1% a year over...

News: Industry insiders believe DWP's Johnson will be swamped by pensions workload.
September 13, 2004... Alan Johnson, the new secretary of state for the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) faces an uphill task in tackling the pensions crisis, professionals said last week. Johnson is the latest minister at the DWP which has seen five...

News: Lib Dems reject compulsion.
September 13, 2004... The Liberal Democrat Party has ditched calls for pensions compulsion claiming it is no longer necessary if the basic state pension is improved. Under the new Lib Dem plans for pension provision, the basic state pension would be increased...

News: Letters - To wield or not to wield.
September 13, 2004... Suzanna White's article in last week's PW - Learning to wield the power of the trustees (PW 6.9.04) - raised an interesting issue: the extent of pension scheme trustees' powers to enforce contribution demands against sponsoring employers, and...

News: Actuaries willing to compete, but only with able contenders.
September 13, 2004... Actuaries are willing to compete for life and pensions work with others that have the appropriate skills, The Actuarial Profession said last week. In response to a review of the profession by Sir Derek Morris, the body said actuaries...

News: Community continues with legal action as hearing set for November.
September 13, 2004... The first hearing against the government on behalf of Allied Steel & Wire (ASW) workers, who lost all their pension savings when their employer went bust, is to take place in November. Community - formerly ISTC and KFAT - the union...

News: Pensions reform needed to reduce means-testing.
September 13, 2004... Pensions reform should be carried our sooner rather later, the Pensions Policy Institute (PPI) said. PPI said there was a huge consensus for reform of the state pension system so that means-testing can be drastically reduced. PPI...

News: Pension credit may be backdated for many.
September 13, 2004... Latest figures from the Department for Work and Pensions show 3.13 million people were paid pension credit at the end of July 2004. This represents an increase of 33,000 households in July and 40,000 individuals being paid the credit. ...

News: Companies attempt to retain final salary schemes.
September 13, 2004... More companies are making policy changes to retain their final salary schemes, research by consultant Mercer Human Resource Consulting (MHRC) has revealed. Research found that despite the number of final salary schemes open to new members...

News: DB members early retirement trend continues for two decades.
September 13, 2004... The move to later retirement for defined benefit (DB) members is no more prominent now than two decades ago, a pension consultant said last week. An analysis of 100,000 members of UK DB schemes by Aon Consulting showed that, despite recent...

News: Left Field - Out of the dead end.
September 13, 2004... If Andrew Smith's resignation achieved anything it was to highlight Britain's pension crisis. The former secretary of state may have resigned over disputes on how to reform incapacity benefits but, intentionally or otherwise, Andrew Smith's...

News: Law firms get rave reviews in Legal 500.
September 13, 2004... Some of UK's pension lawyers have topped the list of recommendations in the latest edition of Legal 500 - an independent analysis of the pension legal market. The book has picked out new faces in the industry as well the names of well-...

News: Ombudsman watch.
September 13, 2004... Simple As the day when we will have to deal with the complexity of simplicity in all its glory draws inexorably closer, I thought that we would look at a very recent ombudsman decision raising a very simple question - to which sort of...

Governance watch: Marconi restructure makes it a FTSE 250 company.
September 13, 2004... Telecommunications company Marconi, now known as Marconi Corporation, re- listed in May 2003, and is now in the FTSE 250. This followed a restructuring which was the result of the company getting into severe financial difficulties and a lot of...

Spotlight: Unbundling execution costs using commission recapture programmes.
September 13, 2004... The pension fund industry is increasingly using commission recapture programmes as a way of 'ticking the box' in the unbundling debate. Providers have seen a growing interest in the product by fund trustees, insurance firms, mutual funds and...

Opinion: Leader - Waiting for a sea change on pensions.
September 13, 2004... A number of years ago, when Mrs Thatcher was leading the government, one of the Tory 'wets' removed by her in a reshuffle remarked that it was little use changing the captain of a ship if it was still heading for the rocks. For the new...

Opinion: Personal view - Can I have a little tedium with my pension please?
September 13, 2004... When the Pensions Policy Institute (PPI) held a consultation exercise on what pension experts want from reform of the pension system, two things stood out. People want simplicity and sustainability. Instead of frequent reactionary change,...

Opinion: Inside view - Combined pension forecast enlightens members.
September 13, 2004... When Shirley Robertson, Sarah Webb and Sarah Ayton took their much- photographed leap into the Saronic Gulf from their Yngling-class boat after they had won Great Britain's first gold medal of the Athens 2004 Olympics last month, it's unlikely...

Special Report: For or against TPAs, that is the question.
September 13, 2004... Contradiction is rife in the third-part administration (TPA) business. Views from players in the pensions industry vary as much as a piece of string, influenced by what part of the market they represent. Some argue that future growth in the...

Special Report: Out with peer groups, in with scheme-specific benchmarks.
September 13, 2004... Using peer group benchmarks is ludicrous. This view from one consultant has been widely adopted by UK pension funds, particularly large schemes. Prompted by regulatory changes, pension fund deficits and the impact of schemes on balance...

People on the move: Del Vecchio to head JPMorgan currency research.
September 13, 2004... JPMorgan Fleming Asset Management has appointed Frank Del Vecchio as head of currency research in London. In his previous position at Citigroup Global Markets in New York, as director of foreign exchange risk advisory group, Del Vecchio was...

People on the move: Hsia to cover services sector for Investec's UK equity team.
September 13, 2004... Investec Asset Management has appointed Ken Hsia as a sector specialist in its UK equity team. Hsia will be covering the services sector and will also be working with Dan Hanbury as assistant portfolio manager on the Investec UK smaller...

People on the move: NTGI appoints Hutchinson as strategist.
September 13, 2004... Simon Hutchinson has been appointed strategist for transition management in Europe at Northern Trust Global Investments (NTGI). Hutchinson joins having spent more than 10 years at Instinet, most recently as head of UK clients and portfolio...

News Just In... : Aegon loses director after reshuffle.
September 13, 2004... Aegon Asset Management has lost its director of institutional business to Legal & General Investment Management (LGIM) following a string of personnel changes at the Scottish-based firm. Mike Craston will leave Aegon at the end of the year...

News Just In... : Cross-party support for members of final salary schemes in wind-up.
September 13, 2004... A cross-party of MPs have agreed to support members of final salary pension schemes in wind-up who have lost significant parts of their retirement savings as result of their companies going bust. In a meeting last week, MPs said they will...

News: PT to implement liability-led investment structure.
September 20, 2004... The Pensions Trust, the GBP2.2bn industry-wide scheme for the charitable, voluntary and not-for-profit sector, is to implement a new liability-led investment structure in response to recommendations put forward by the Myners' review. The...

News: ITS appointed as independent trustee to Ilford pension scheme.
September 20, 2004... Independent Trustee Services (ITS) has been selected as independent trustee to the Ilford pension scheme following the appointment of receivers to Ilford Imaging UK Limited. Chris Martin, managing director, ITS, said: "The receivers were...

News: Whitgift appoints Investment Solutions.
September 20, 2004... Investment Solutions, the multi-manager arm of Alexander Forbes, has picked up a GBP3.5m pension fund mandate with a UK charity, after being short-listed by Alexander Forbes Financial Services. The Whitgift Foundation appointed Investment...

News: College staff offered stakeholder as alternative to LGPS membership.
September 20, 2004... Staff from three colleges in Wales are being offered a stakeholder pension as an alternative to their local government pension scheme (LGPS) membership after their employer transferred their contract to another company without any pension...

News: DWP seeks info on wound-up DB schemes.
September 20, 2004... The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is asking pension professionals to help gather information on defined benefit schemes that have wound up, or are expected to wind-up, with a significant shortfall. The information will feed into a...

News: Law firm warns of possible Reits failure.
September 20, 2004... Government plans to establish a UK version of real estate investment trusts (Reits) could fail unless serious concerns of the UK property industry are heeded, a law firm has warned. Earlier this year, the government announced plans to...

News: FTSE 350 comes under pressure as fund managers press for adoption of Crest.
September 20, 2004... Fund managers are putting pressure on FTSE 350 firms and global custodians to adopt the electronic voting platform Crest as a measure to ensure their proxy votes are cast as intended. The move follows calls from pension funds to improve...

News: Opra reports down 30% over quarter.
September 20, 2004... The number of reports made to the Occupational Pensions Regulatory Authority (Opra) dropped significantly over the last quarter ending June 2004. Over three months from April to June 2004, Opra received 24,812 reports compared to 36,083 in...

News: Jagger replaces Watsons as adviser to oe20m Principality Building Society scheme.
September 20, 2004... Actuarial firm Jagger & Associates has replaced global consultancy firm Watson Wyatt as financial advisers to Principality Building Society's company pension scheme. The final salary scheme is managed by Fidelity Investments and Legal &...

News: Northern Trust appointed by YMCA for oe26m MoM mandate.
September 20, 2004... The YMCA Pension and Life Assurance Plan has selected Northern Trust Global Investments (NTGI) to run GBP26m in equity and fixed income. NTGI will invest 85% of the YMCA's portfolio on a manager-of-managers (MoM) basis. Paul Smiley,...