December 2017

07Dec

UK will not pay lump sum Brexit bill, according to draft agreement

The U.K. will pay no upfront Brexit divorce bill to the European Union but will instead continue to act “as if [it] remained a member state” by meeting its ongoing liabilities as and when they arise for decades to come, according to a draft text of a joint agreement with the EU. The clause forms part of a proposed draft agreement between London and Brussels that was circulated among U.K. officials Monday, the contents of which have been shared with...

December 7, 2017
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06Dec

OECD: UK has lowest state pension of any developed country

Britain’s workers can look forward to the worst state pension of any major country, according to a report by the developed world’s leading economic thinktank. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) study calculated that a typical British worker will at retirement receive a state pension and other benefits worth around 29% of what they had previously been earning. That compares with an average of 63% in other OECD countries, and more than 80% in Italy and the Netherlands. The report...

December 6, 2017
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06Dec

Brazil’s Bovespa jumps as legislators organize behind pension bill

Brazil's benchmark Bovespa index led gains among Latin American equities markets on Tuesday, as the governing coalition appeared closer to gaining the votes needed to pass a pension reform. The reform, seen as important to shoring up Brazil's fiscal health, has been by far the dominant factor in the Bovespa's performance for weeks. Late on Monday, Rodrigo Maia, the speaker of Brazil's lower house, told journalists that President Michel Temer was still far from assembling the coalition needed to pass the...

December 6, 2017
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06Dec

US. Public Pension Funds’ Anti-Fossil Fuel Activism Raises Risks For Beneficiaries

By David Blackmon In a recent piece, I wrote about the fact that the Divestment movement is now running into headwinds, as federal public policy under the Trump Administration moves further away from the movement’s goal of artificially limiting the production of oil and gas domestically, and as it is becoming increasingly clear that some major public pension funds are finding themselves severely underfunded after years of heavy focus on the movement’s investing priorities. As it has become increasingly obvious over...

December 6, 2017
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05Dec

PPF publish the Purple Book for 2017

In its twelfth edition of the Purple Book, the Pension Protection Fund (PPF) reveals that while the proportion of open schemes has remained relatively steady in the twelve months to March 2017, the number of schemes closed to future accruals has seen a marked increase. The figures show 12 per cent of DB pension schemes are currently open to new members, falling from 13 per cent in 2016 and down from 43 per cent in 2006 (when Purple Book records...

December 5, 2017
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05Dec

New Zealand is robbing us of our Swiss pensions

Swiss expats living in New Zealand want to use Automatic Exchange of Information (AIE) to get a fair distribution of pensions in their adopted country, and they’ve persuaded one chamber of Swiss parliament to take up their cause. For many people who have spent their lives grinding away at a job in Switzerland, the idea of retiring at 65 and heading for an island where the cost of living is low and a Swiss pension goes far is highly appealing. But in...

December 5, 2017
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05Dec

EU court adviser says Britain was wrong to refuse transgender woman’s pension

Britain’s rejection of a transgender woman’s claim for a women’s state pension because she was still married to her spouse from before her transition is discriminatory, an EU court adviser said on Tuesday. Advocate General Michal Bobek of the Court of Justice of the European Union (ECJ) stated in a non-binding opinion that marriage status does not play a role in accessing state retirement pensions for people who are not transgender. “This amounts to direct discrimination on the basis of sex,...

December 5, 2017
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05Dec

UK. ‘Corbyn fear’ sees pension fund body advise Labour council to invest abroad

A Labour-controlled council has been advised to invest some of its £250m in pension assets overseas because of the “political risk” of a Labour election victory and “renationalisation” by a Corbyn-led government. A Camden council document posted online last week summarises the advice given by London CIV, a £5.6bn fund management group set up by local authorities to manage the pension funds of London councils. London CIV is chaired by Bob Kerslake, a former head of the civil service, and includes board...

December 5, 2017
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04Dec

Pension funds, sell your oil & gas stock

Last month, Norway’s $1 trillion pension fund announced plans to drop oil and gas stocks from its core benchmark stock portfolio. The move was of note because it served as an important acknowledgement by a major institutional investor that such holdings have lost their status as mainstream, blue-chip investments and are now considered speculative. It carries special significance too because the Norwegians really know the oil and gas market. The country owns vast oil reserves and the government — and...

December 4, 2017
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04Dec

UK. Two in 10 pensioners now living in poverty

‘UK Poverty 2017’ – which says it’s the first report of its kind to assess rates of poverty and how they are changing - claims that 14 million people across the UK do not have enough money to have an acceptable standard of living. That 14 million is made up of eight million working age adults, four million children, and 1.9 million pensioners. JRF says that while poverty levels have substantially improved over the last two decades among those that are...

December 4, 2017
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