Investment Archives - Page 82 of 149 - Pension Policy International

30NovNovember 30, 2022

US. Amid FTX fallout, public pension fund defends its big bet on crypto-related holdings

As investors scramble to assess the fallout from the bankruptcy of cryptocurrency exchange FTX and the general price collapse of bitcoin and other digital currencies, a public pension fund is standing by its hefty commitment to crypto-related holdings. The Fairfax County Police Officers Retirement System, a defined-benefit pension plan covering law-enforcement officers in the sprawling northern Virginia county, has over 7% of assets invested in crypto-related holdings, according to a person familiar with the fund, spread across venture capital and...

November 30, 2022

NewsInvestment, US

29NovNovember 29, 2022

US. Blackboxes Within Blackboxes: Cryptocurrency In Your State Pension

The recent collapse of the global cryptocurrency markets has exposed many previously hidden dangers related to these blackbox investments. Growing secrecy at our nation’s public pensions has turned these retirement plans into blackboxes themselves. Public pension officials have agreed to be kept in the dark about how much they’re poised to lose in cryptocurrency investments and aren’t eager to acknowledge the losses resulting from their gambling in crypto. No one knows for certain just how much blackbox cryptocurrency blackbox...

November 29, 2022

NewsInnovation, Investment, US

29NovNovember 29, 2022

Innovation in ESG Investing

There has never been a better time to invest based on environmental, social and governance principles. Institutional asset owners are benefiting from a menu of ESG strategies, products and capabilities that is bigger than ever before. Innovation by asset managers and increased regulatory pressure is driving ESG investing forward. Most asset owners, 85%, believe that ESG factors are material to investment policy, while 70% say ESG factors have become more material in the last five years, according to the Voice...

November 29, 2022

NewsESG, Investment

25NovNovember 25, 2022

Global top 300 pension funds

By Thinking Ahead Institute and Pensions & Investments Pension fund industry trends Growth headwinds test financial and sustainability mandate resilience Has the macro reality shifted from ‘lower-for-longer’ to ‘end-of-cheap-money’? The last decade’s fear of deflation has been replaced by significantly higher inflation. A steep rate hike cycle has led to more interest rate volatility and is placing pressure on pension funds to deliver sufficient risk-adjusted returns. Pension funds are expected to face elevated macro uncertainty over the short term. The industry has...

November 25, 2022

Books, Books, Pension Management2022, Investment, Pension Management

25NovNovember 25, 2022

The Financialization of U.S. Public Pensions, 1945-1974

By Sean Vanatta This article examines a major transformation public employee pension investment in the United States, from investing public funds in public infrastructure in the 1940s and 1950s, to investing public funds in private securities—corporate bonds, stocks, and mortgages—in the 1960s and 1970s. Three factors drove this change. First, in the adjacent field of professional asset management, motivated financial elites orchestrated a shift in state-level trust law, from legally-sanctioned investment lists, which encouraged amateur investment and safety, to the...

November 25, 2022

Articles, Public Pensions, System CharacterizationFunding, Investment, KW: US, Pension Management

25NovNovember 25, 2022

UK. MPs told ‘illegal’ LDIs fanned gilt crisis

The flames of the crisis in the gilt market following the Mini Budget were fanned by widely used liability driven investments (LDIs) that were “almost certainly illegal”, MPs were told yesterday. At a hearing in front of the Work and Pensions Select Committee, experts criticised LDIs for being highly leveraged, causing "carnage" for some pension schemes, and blamed regulators for not acting previously. Bond market veteran Dr Con Keating, now head of research at the specialist insurer Brighton Rock Group, said...

November 25, 2022

NewsInvestment, Pension Management, UK

22NovNovember 22, 2022

Planned reforms to UK pensions will open access to PE

Defined contribution schemes in the UK may soon be allowed greater access to private markets following proposals from the Department for Work and Pensions. Under the consultation, published on 6 October, the UK government plans to remove performance fees from the charge cap applied to DC schemes – which are constrained by an annual 0.75 percent charge cap on assets under management and administration. This has acted as a barrier to accessing certain asset classes that charge a performance fee,...

November 22, 2022

NewsInvestment, Regulation, UK

22NovNovember 22, 2022

P&I launches report on U.S. public pension plan benchmarks.

This report intends to provide insights into the overall and asset class benchmarks selected by the 50 largest U.S. public defined benefit plans. The top 50 plans are selected based on their reported U.S. DB asset totals in Pensions & Investments’ 2021 survey. Eleven out of 50 plans did not disclose enough detailed information, and 10 plans had a fiscal year ended other than June 30. Due to the complexity of public plan reporting and different approaches to subasset classes,...

November 22, 2022

NewsInvestment, Public Pensions, US

21NovNovember 21, 2022

UK regulators call for action on hidden leverage threat to pension funds

Regulators and policymakers are calling for action to address the risks associated with pension funds’ use of derivatives, after key watchdogs admitted last week that they were unprepared for the crisis that hit the industry in September. The meltdown, now the focus of four separate parliamentary probes, revealed regulators did not have a reliable picture of the scale of hidden leverage in liability-driven investment (LDI) strategies, which cover about £1.4tn of the future promises made by UK defined benefit pension...

November 21, 2022

News2022, Investment, Pension Management, Regulation, Risk, UK

21NovNovember 21, 2022

India. Government pension funds need more lucrative investment avenues to quell controversy between old and new schemes

By Gautam Mukherjee When the Vajpayee administration introduced the new pension system (NPS) for Central and other government employees commencing on 1 January 2004, the motivation was to ensure long-term viability. It is mandatory for the Central government employees and a few other entities. Much greater longevity had complicated the calculations on the old pension system (OPS). The threat of a bankrupt state defaulting on pensions, such as West Bengal, Kerala or Punjab today, was already beginning to loom large in...

November 21, 2022

News2022, India, Investment, Pension Management, State Pensions

November 2022