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Pension funds reject EU financial transaction tax

When the European Commission announced plans on February 14 to introduce a Financial Transaction Tax (FTT) by the start of 2014, it planted a bomb under Europe’s pension funds. That is not, of course, the view of Algirdas Šemeta (pictured below right), the EU’s commissioner for taxation. He says the proposed tax is “unquestionably fair […]
Richard TomlinsonMarch 8, 2013
Investor Profile

Danica maneuvers towards infrastructure

Danish pension provider Danica is upping the alternatives portion in its roughly $57-billion portfolio as it looks to boost returns within the country’s strict solvency framework. Alternatives already make up over 4 per cent of the $33-billion Traditional Fund, Danica’s largest and most conventional pension pool, double the proportion the asset class took at the […]
Dan BillinghamFebruary 22, 2013
Asset Allocation

Global CIO survey: lowered expectations

Connecticut-based financial services management consultant, Casey Quirk, and institutional investment specialist publication, top1000funds.com, joined forces in a global chief investment officer survey to measure the sentiment of asset owners, and the extent to which the 2008 crisis has had an effect on the behaviour of internal investment teams, their outlook and corresponding asset allocation. With […]
Amanda WhiteFebruary 13, 2013
Editorial

Hedging your bets? Back innovation for wealth creation

In 2012 there were 31 hedge fund managers on the Forbes 400 list, representing about 8 per cent of the wealthiest people in the US, up from 6 per cent the year before. Wealthy people on the whole don’t interest me, but innovation does. And the creation of wealth, and the creation of jobs and […]
Amanda WhiteFebruary 1, 2013
Investor Profile

UMR: growth from government bonds?

“We have to move faster than our competitors,” says the chief executive of French retirement fund Union Mutualiste Retraite, Charles Vaquier. It is a phrase that you can hear uttered by business leaders at all sectors and levels, but one that institutional investors rarely emphasise. In chatting about its investment strategy, it soon becomes apparent […]
Dan BillinghamJanuary 30, 2013
Research

What is intergenerational justice?

In the paper Pension Funds, Sovereign-wealth Funds and Intergenerational Justice from the Norwegian School of Economics, those Scandinavians have come up with something better than the national alcohol monopoly: a natty new finance term. “Intergenerational justice” (try saying it thrice after a glass of aquavit) seems to refer to a combination of two things: a […]
STAFF WRITERNovember 28, 2012
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