More comment – Page 11
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Opinion PiecesViewpoint: Consolidation in UK pensions market – what are the options?
Will there be an increase in pension scheme consolidation in the UK market and will it lead to increased investment in alternative ESG assets? Consolidation could provide the collateral to invest in greater ESG assets.
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Opinion PiecesViewpoint: Ageing demographics challenge Germany’s PAYG state pension system
Germany has a well-established occupational pension system, but participation among employees is only about 50% overall, and in the significant SME segment only 30%
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Opinion PiecesSolvency II: Rule changes can’t force risk taking
Changing the rules can often seem like a very sensible policy choice – whether a sweeping deregulatory reform or more of a technocratic adjustment to regulations.
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Opinion PiecesLetter from Berlin: The German way to supervise the EU Taxonomy
The German financial supervisory authority, BaFin, has chosen its own path to deal with the EU taxonomy – in particular when it comes to nuclear and gas.
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Opinion PiecesTrustees must assess impact of rate hikes
The Bank of England (BoE) has hiked its policy rate by 50bps to 2.25%, prioritising the fight against inflation over support for growth in its domestic economy. This interest rate increase has hit levels not seen since the end of 2008 but in line with a majority of economists’ consensus.
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Opinion PiecesAustralia: Role for superannuation in nation-building
A new Labor government has set the scene for change in Australia’s growing superannuation industry to ensure that some of the country’s A$3.3trn (€2,3trn) savings pool is directed toward social housing and the energy transition.
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Opinion PiecesUS: Transparency concerns over SEC private market disclosure rules
Will the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC’s) new climate risk reporting rules bring more transparency to private markets? Or will they have the unintended consequences of increasing the opacity of the markets?
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Opinion PiecesGuest viewpoint: Let’s make ESG real, and call out the fakes
Environmental, social and governance (ESG) investing has become pretty much mainstream. At its ideological base is the belief that a capitalist economy and polity that seeks the well-being of its middle class can achieve positive change by mobilising investment flows – in particular, that environmental protection and social justice can come about by correcting where investments are channelled.
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Book ReviewBooks: How liquid are liquid assets?
Amin Rajan speaks to Pascal Blanqué about his latest book
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Opinion PiecesItaly’s far-right government won’t bring about great changes
The largely anticipated outcome of the Italian election was a strong mandate for the centre-right coalition. This would hardly be a new scenario, were it not for the fact that this time the chosen leader is Giorgia Meloni of Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy), a right-wing party with historical links with fascism.
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Opinion PiecesESG Viewpoint: The genius of SFDR - requiring ordinal disclosure is so much more than a label
When the EU originally announced its High-Level Action Plan for Sustainable Growth in 2018, its intended eco-label received a lot of attention. Many considered the Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR) a boring, administrative matter. Labels are shiny commonplace symbols hyped by corporate marketing teams around the world to instil a feel-good factor in retail consumers and bolster the defensibility of institutional buyer decision making. Required Ordinal Disclosure (ROD) is a technocratic idea whose genius has remained largely unrecognised to date.
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Opinion PiecesViewpoint: Irredeemably irrational – why using IRR to benchmark and pick funds makes no sense
With the continuing proliferation of managers, strategies and funds, wouldn’t it be wonderful if there was one simple metric that could help determine which to back (and which to avoid)? The good news: there is. The bad news: you’re probably not using it.
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Opinion PiecesViewpoint: Impact investing – socially responsible investing reimagined
Investment in support of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) has more than doubled over the last two years. Yet impact investing has aroused skepticism.
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Opinion PiecesViewpoint: Five myths about alternative investments
Alternatives can help investors pursue their goals by being a source of new opportunities
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Opinion PiecesInstitutional capital for energy resilience
Ukraine’s independence day on 24 August also marked six months since the start of Russia’s invasion and with it a profound shift in the global geopolitical and economic balance.
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Opinion PiecesHeatwaves remind us climate finance is more than net zero
In the middle of the now-famous speech that ended Stuart Kirk’s tenure as HSBC’s head of responsible investment, he said something that got lost. While most of Kirk’s controversial May presentation on ‘why investors need not worry about climate risk’ was picked apart on social media and in the press – resulting in his suspension and exit from the asset manager – his slide on climate adaptation (or ‘adaption’) was largely ignored.
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Opinion PiecesNotes from Amsterdam: Reform speeds up consolidation
With each passing day the likelihood diminishes that the law on the future of pensions (Wet toekomst pensioenen) will come into force as planned on 1 January next year. The law was sent to parliament in spring this year, but a date for parliamentary discussion is yet to be set.
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Opinion PiecesPrivate managers ‘not serious’ about climate
Fears about the effect of human activity from the climate date from the ancient Greeks, but it was not until the 1980s that scientists began to unite for action on climate change, and the warnings have only escalated since. Too often they have been ignored or denied.
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Opinion PiecesAustralia: Downturn casts a shadow over super anniversary
Australia’s superannuation industry enters its fourth decade under the darkening clouds of a global economic slowdown that is already having a dramatic impact on returns.
