Crisis in the global economy may be knocking the value of most UK pension funds off course, but it is actually helping swell assets at the £12-billion ($19-billion) Pension Protection Fund (PPF). Established in 2005 along similar lines to America’s giant Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, the PPF absorbs the assets of defined-benefit private sector schemes
United Kingdom pension funds will increase their real estate allocations as bond and equity investments continue to disappoint, according to new research by property consultancy Jones Lang Lasalle. The funds typically hold around 5 per cent of their assets in real estate, but the recent findings predict the pendulum will swing in favour of much
In a policy to galvanise pension fund assets to help boost its ailing economy, the UK government wants funds to invest in small and medium-sized businesses. As part of its Business Finance Partnership (BFP), it has named four asset managers to run specialist funds backed by pooled government and private capital. The funds will invest
For many trustees, fundamental indexing is still too much of a leap to risk any serious asset allocation. But the £11 billion Glasgow-based Strathclyde Pension Fund, one of the largest UK local authority schemes, plans to invest in the strategy. The idea is to track an equity index that weights companies according to their economic
Many of the countries with the largest oil reserves also boast the largest sovereign wealth funds (SWFs). And yet African producers, like newcomer Ghana, Angola, and Nigeria which has been pumping oil since the 1950s, haven’t saved much of their oil revenue. Now, in an effort to replicate the long-term growth of funds like Norway’s
The UK’s £3.3-billion ($5.6-billion) Merchant Navy Officers’ Pension Fund (MNOPF) is poised to offload the final portion of its defined-benefit liabilities in the old section of the scheme. The fund, which has provided pensions to the shipping industry since 1937, comprises a $3.2-billion new section and a $2-billion old section, closed since 1978 and with
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