September 2019

03Sep

Top 20 pension funds’ AUM declines for first time in seven years

Assets under management (AUM) at the world's 300 largest pension funds fell in value by 0.4% to a total of US$18 trillion in 2018, in sharp contrast to an increase of 15.1% in 2017, according to the latest World 300 research from the Thinking Ahead Institute. The research, conducted in conjunction with Pensions & Investments, a leading U.S. investment newspaper, shows that the value of the top 20 pension funds' AUM fell by 1.6% in 2018, equating to 40.7%...

September 3, 2019
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03Sep

South Korea. Stalled reform

After 10 months of discussion, a committee on national pension reform last week suggested three options, all of which fall short of ensuring the long-term sustainability of the pension scheme, now under increasing strain. Differences in views between labor and business representatives barred the panel formed in October under the Economic, Social and Labor Council from working out a single proposal. The first option calls for freezing the income replacement rate, which is set to be lowered to 40...

September 3, 2019
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August 2019
23Aug

Wealth: The Ultra-High Net Worth Guide to Growing and Protecting Assets

By Richard P. Rojeck With few exceptions, books on personal finance focus on investing. And with few exceptions, these same books focus on the general public. This book takes a comprehensive approach to the subject, directed to the ultra-high net worth reader, filling this void. While there is no shortage of experts in legal, tax, investment, and other matters, in many ways, ultra-high net worth individuals are underserved, even as they are confronted with potentially increasing challenges...

August 23, 2019
Books, Investing, Savings,
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June 2019

28Jun

Switching Costs and Competition in Retirement Investment

By Fernando Luco How do different switching costs affect choices and competition in a private pension system? I answer this question in a setting in which variation in employment status allows me to identify two switching costs that jointly affect enrollees’ decisions: the cost of evaluating financial information and the cost of the bureaucratic process that enrollees must navigate when switching. I use this variation to estimate the different switching costs and study their impact on competition among pension...

June 28, 2019
Adequacy, Articles, Investing, System Sustainability,
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April 2019

08Apr

Liability-Driven Investment: From Analogue to Digital, Pensions to Robo-Advice

By Dan Tammas-Hastings Understand the investment template that dominates the pension industry Liability-Driven Investment is the practitioner's guide to this increasingly popular investment template. Already the dominant framework for pension schemes in Europe and the UK, the LDI market is expected to grow significantly with the shift from Defined Benefit to Defined Contribution, and then into Digital Asset Management -- or Robo-Advice. With an aging population and significant under-saving globally, more and more finance professionals will need to know how to work...

April 8, 2019
Books, Books, Investing,
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08Apr

Corporate Governance in Banking and Investor Protection: From Theory to Practice

By Belen Diaz Diaz, Samuel O Idowu, Philip Molyneux This book explores the status quo of corporate governance in banking and investor protection from both theoretical and practical perspectives. Bringing together original conclusions with a regional and international focus, it provides a timely and comprehensive overview of the effectiveness of corporate governance in the financial sector and an assessment of investor protection. It also includes a number of examples and case studies to illustrate the findings. The book compares corporate...

April 8, 2019
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March 2019

31Mar

Global Pension Crisis: Unfunded Liabilities and How We Can Fill the Gap

By Richard A. Marin, Robert H. Frank A comprehensive look at the crisis of unfunded pension liabilities and what must be done to avoid the same problem in the future As the generational bubble of the Baby Boomers begins to retire, it is increasingly evident that governments, corporations, and individuals have failed to adequately prepare for the obligations and needs of this giant cohort. Retirees are outliving actuarial life expectancies, pension liabilities are skyrocketing, pension plans are underfunded, and medical costs...

March 31, 2019
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June 2018

11Jun

Optimal Risk-Sharing in Pension Funds When Stock and Labor Markets are Co-Integrated

By Ilja Boelaars (University of Chicago) & Roel Mehlkopf (Tilburg University) A well established believe in the pension industry is that collective pension funds should take more stock market risk (compared to individual retirement accounts) since risk may be shared with future generations. We extend the OLG model of Gollier (2008) by adding labor income risk in the spirit of Benzoni, Collin-Dufresne, and Goldstein (2007) and show that this idea may be misguided. For the empirical range of parameter values...

June 11, 2018
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August 2017

20Aug

Ethical, Environmental, Social and Governance-Oriented Investments

By Julia M. Puaschunder (Harvard) In the aftermath of the 2008/9 World Great Recession, ethical investing blossomed as opportunity to imbue trust in the economy. The crisis aftermath offered invaluable opportunities to redefine social investment to strengthen a more sustained, inclusive and equitable society. The 2015 incepted Sustainable Development Goals spearheaded the idea of financing societal advancement. Ethical, Environmental, Social and Governance-oriented Investments are key to sustainable prosperity. In the wake of stakeholder activism and based on intrinsic socio-psychological motives,...

August 20, 2017
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20Aug

Whale Watching on the Trading Floor: Organizational Misbehaviour, Collusive Rogue Trading, and Corporate Culture Deficits in the Investment Banking Industry

By Hagen Rafeld & Peter N. Posch (TU Dortmund University); Sebastian G Fritz-Morgenthal (Frankfurt School of Finance and Management) Recent history reveals a series of rogue traders, jeopardizing their employer’s assets and reputation. There have been a number of instances of unauthorized acting in concert between traders, their supervisors, and/or firm’s senior management, resulting in collusive rogue trading (CRT). In the likes of the Libor manipulation by jointly several traders from major investment banks, CRT cannot be seen only in relation...

August 20, 2017
Articles, Corporate Governance, Investing, Management,
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