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Opinion

Will infrastructure ever find wings?

It’s difficult to ignore the clamour around infrastructure investment, the asset class of the moment. Lloyds TSB and the London Pensions Fund Authority recently joined founder members of the Pensions Infrastructure Platform, PIP, a government initiative to encourage pension funds to invest more in infrastructure. The Universities Superannuation Pension Scheme, USS, just increased its allocation […]
Investor Profile

The Pension Protection Fund: lifeboat in a storm

Crisis in the global economy may be knocking the value of most UK pension funds off course, but it is actually helping swell assets at the £12-billion ($19-billion) Pension Protection Fund (PPF). Established in 2005 along similar lines to America’s giant Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, the PPF absorbs the assets of defined-benefit private sector schemes […]
Uncategorised posts

Brussels ‘cooking up real estate shock’

The European Union is threatening to drive pension funds out of real estate investments, experts warn. That could be one of the undesirable results of plans to put pension funds under new risk regulations akin to the Solvency II requirements for the continent’s insurers. What most concerns John Forbes, a PriceWaterhouseCoopers real estate expert, is […]
Uncategorised posts

PIP in to infrastructure

A swathe of UK pension funds is poised to increase its exposure to infrastructure. In a small start, which enthusiasts believe will quickly grow, the Pension Infrastructure Platform (PIP) will launch as a fund in January 2013, targeting £2 billion ($3.24 billion) worth of projects with the backing of around 10 UK pension funds. The […]