February 2023
16Feb

Denmark’s AkademikerPension takes on the banks financing fossil fuels

Denmark’s AkademikerPension, the member-owned pension fund for 150,000 academics, has just notched up another important milestone in its ambitious sustainability strategy. Pressure from the fund’s CIO and chief financial officer Anders Schelde on Denmark’s Dankse Bank contributed to the lender announcing plans to end new financing to oil and gas E&P companies that don’t have a credible transition plan in line with the Paris Agreement. Last year, Schelde stood up and challenged Dankse executives at the bank’s AGM, the only...

February 16, 2023
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15Feb

US. SEC Proposes Rule Making It Harder For Crypto Firms To Work With Hedge, Pension Funds

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is set to propose rule changes that would make it harder for crypto firms to be designated as "qualified custodians," Bloomberg reported. The new rules would allow crypto firms to hold client assets for money managers. While the proposed changes have not yet been released, they could make it more difficult for institutional funds that have invested in cryptocurrency to comply with regulatory requirements for holding client assets. These funds may need to move their...

February 15, 2023
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14Feb

US. Pension funds are sticking with bonds for the most part

Last year was rough for U.S. pension fund bond portfolios. With the Bloomberg U.S. Aggregate Bond index down 14.6% after a year of high volatility, investors had to look to other parts of their portfolios to bolster returns. For the defined benefit plans among the 200 largest plan sponsors in Pensions & Investments' survey, the evidence of that volatility is obvious in the data. A significant portion of the plans in the survey reported smaller bond portfolios as of Sept....

February 14, 2023
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10Feb

Canada Pension Plan Investment Board returns net 1.9% in latest quarter

Canada Pension Plan Investment Board returned a net 1.9% in the third quarter of fiscal 2023 ended Dec. 31, the Toronto-based board announced in a news release Thursday. For the five-year and 10-year periods through Dec. 31, the fund delivered annualized net returns of 8.1% and 10%, respectively. Neither benchmark returns nor returns for individual asset classes are not provided in quarterly returns. CPPIB, which manages the assets of the Canada Pension Plan, also said the pension fund's net assets increased to...

February 10, 2023
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08Feb

U.S. Anti-ESG bill could cut this State pension returns by $6.7 bln

Proposed legislation to limit the use of sustainable investment factors by fund managers of the U.S. state of Indiana could cut $6.7 billion from the investment returns of a public pension system there over a decade, a fiscal analysis shows. One such bill proposed in Indiana requires public pension system officials to act only in the fiduciary interests of participants and beneficiaries. According to a Feb. 4 "fiscal impact statement" prepared by the Indiana Legislative Services Agency, which advises lawmakers in...

February 8, 2023
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January 2023
31Jan

Push into illiquid assets exposes UK pension savers to higher fees

The UK government will relax rules shielding tens of millions of UK retirement savers from high charges as it aims to channel billions of pounds of pension fund cash into longer-term investments such as start-ups and infrastructure. The government on Monday confirmed plans to exempt performance fees from an annual 0.75 per cent cap on annual charges that can be levied on auto-enrolled pension savers. The cap has long been seen by the industry as a barrier for many “defined...

January 31, 2023
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30Jan

New York State common allocates 11 Billion alternatives

New York State Common Retirement Fund, Albany, disclosed just over $1.1 billion in new commitments completed in December, a transaction report on its website shows. Within private equity, the $233.2 billion pension fund committed $350 million to Apollo Investment Fund X, a buyout fund managed by Apollo Global Management, and $300 million to Hellman & Friedman Capital Partners XI, also a buyout fund. The pension fund also disclosed two commitments to funds managed by KSL Capital Partners: $300 million to real...

January 30, 2023
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26Jan

US. Cryptocurrency Was Sold To State And Local Pensions As ESG

Senator Katie Muth, a Board Member for the $40 billion Pennsylvania State Employees’ Retirement System (PSERS) will never forget the first meeting of the pension board she attended and the ESG presentation she heard which included cryptocurrency as a solution for the un-banked in African countries. “I was really looking forward to the ESG presentation but was very confused as to how blackbox fake currency could improve the lives of people suffering from economic hardship on the continent. The...

January 26, 2023
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26Jan

U.K. Sustainability rules could set ‘a high bar,’ but cloud definitions

Although upcoming rules on sustainable investment product labeling and disclosure could put the U.K. ahead of Europein combating greenwashing, they may not makes things clearer for institutional investors, based on reactions submitted to the Financial Conduct Authority. On Wednesday, the last day for commenting on the FCA's Sustainability Disclosure Requirements and investment labels proposed in October, financial groups and experts generally praised the regulator's approach as setting a high bar for the labeling of funds marketed as green and disclosure...

January 26, 2023
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25Jan

UK pension schemes search out forestry investments

Nest and Cushon, two UK pension schemes with combined assets of more than £26bn, are in a joint search for asset management partners to develop new forestry investment strategies to address climate change pressures. Both pension schemes believe that allocating money to forestry projects will offset environmentally damaging emissions from other investments and deliver attractive returns as the price of carbon rises to reflect the increasing costs of pollution by human activity. The schemes have set aside an initial £600mn for...

January 25, 2023
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