Sort content by
Uncategorised posts

Is reviving Europe a suspended apparition?

Getting Europe’s swelling institutional capital to support long-term projects that could benefit its uninspired economies was an idea that sent heads nodding around the continent as it suffered the brunt of the financial crisis. Get pension, insurance and foundation money into where it is most needed with the attraction of reliable long-term cash flows and […]
Investor Profile

Santander: between its sponsor and a hard place

Antony Barker has only been director of pensions at the £8-billion ($12.2-billion) Santander Pension Fund, a defined benefit scheme for employees of the UK arm of the Spanish-owned bank, since August last year. Charged with rejuvenating the pension scheme, a worrying source of risk blighting the fortunes of the bank and a thorn in the […]
Uncategorised posts

Fewer, bigger funds for UK?

Australia, the US, Canada and Denmark have all done it. Kazakhstan and even Oman are talking about it. Increasingly, public sector pension funds are merging or pooling their assets into fewer bigger schemes. It’s no surprise the debate is gathering momentum in the United Kingdom, ripe for consolidation with a Local Government Pension Fund Scheme […]
Investor Profile

Mid-life crisis at West Midlands Pension Fund

The area surrounding the British city of Wolverhampton, near Birmingham, is still called the Black Country although the polluting coal mines and steel mills that sprung up during England’s nineteenth-century explosion of wealth have long gone. Today there is little evidence that Wolverhampton was the cradle of an industrial revolution and the 300-odd public sector […]