International

Die von Thomas Aeschi eingereichte Motion, welche die Einführung der freien PK-Wahl als Konsequenz der Abzocker-Initiative forderte, ist vom NR mit 100 gegen 72 Stimmen abgelehnt worden.

  Ratsprotokoll /  Motion

Norway’s giant oil fund said that it earned 15.9 percent, or about $115 billion, on its investments last year, profiting from big bets on American and European stocks that offset losses in government bonds from around the world. It raised the holdings of the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund to a value of about $840 billion.

Norway, while a small country in terms of population, has saved a large cushion, about $170,000 for each of its roughly five million citizens, in case of hard times or falling oil prices. While most of the Gulf oil states also have large funds, some other oil producers, including Britain, have chosen to use their oil income for current expenditure.

The Norwegian fund said that it held an average stake of 2.5 percent in all European listed stocks and 1.3 percent in stocks across the globe.

The fund’s rules limit its holdings in any company to no more than 10 percent of equity. But so far it has remained well below those limits. At the end of the year, the fund’s largest stock position was a 2.7 percent stake worth about $6.5 billion in the Swiss food giant Nestlé, followed by a roughly $5 billion holding in Royal Dutch Shell, a roughly 2 percent stake.

  NYT

The UK government said it will force full public disclosure of all "hidden" fees and costs in workplace pension schemes, including trading and transaction costs, in a move that would load new requirements on fund managers and pension providers.

  Financial News

The UK’s National Association of Pension Funds has launched its first infrastructure fund, part of its £2 billion investment initiative and the first time UK pension funds have banded together to buy real-world assets on their own behalf.

The first fund has raised £260 million so far, from five of the initiative’s founding investors, to put money into UK public-private partnership projects. It has a cap of £500 million and is in the process of raising the rest of the money.

  Financial News / Napf press release

(Reuters) – The savings of the European Union’s 500 million citizens could be used to fund long-term investments to boost the economy and help plug the gap left by banks since the financial crisis, an EU document says.

The EU is looking for ways to wean the 28-country bloc from its heavy reliance on bank financing and find other means of funding small companies, infrastructure projects and other investment.

"The economic and financial crisis has impaired the ability of the financial sector to channel funds to the real economy, in particular long-term investment," said the document, seen by Reuters.

The Commission will ask the bloc’s insurance watchdog in the second half of this year for advice on a possible draft law "to mobilize more personal pension savings for long-term financing", the document said.

  Reuters / New American

U.S. public pensions reported median gains of 16.1 percent last year, the fourth time in five years that the funds earned double-digit returns, according to Wilshire Associates Inc.

Smaller public pensions, which invest a greater share of their assets in U.S. stocks, beat plans with assets of more than $5 billion, the Santa Monica, California-based consulting firm said today in a report. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index (SPX) of U.S. stocks rose 30 percent in 2013, ending the year at an all-time high for the first time since 1999.

“U.S. equities trumped all other asset classes,” said Bob Waid, a managing director at Wilshirehttp.

  Businessweek

Dutch pension plans’ funding ratios are back on track, with the average reaching 110% by January 31, 2014, according to data from Aon Hewitt. The ratio reflects just a single percentage point growth from the funding level in December 2013. Liabilities also rose in January by about 0.6 %, driven by a slight decline in the three-month average rate.

While some of the largest pension funds have taken the opportunity over the past few weeks to announce they would no longer have to cut benefits, Aon Hewitt has argued that the landscape for Dutch funds remains fragile.

Some of the largest funds, ABP, PFZW, and BPF Bouw all exceeded their minimum funding target in the first month of this year. ABP revealed last week that its funding ratio had increased to 105.9%, 1.7% above the required minimum. It has brought to an end a 0.5% reduction in pensioner payments, introduced last year, as a result.

  ai-cio

According to Aon Hewitt’s survey of more than 220 U.S. companies with defined benefit plans representing 5.8 million workers, 62 percent of pension plan sponsors are somewhat or very likely to adjust their plan’s investments to better match the liabilities in the year ahead, compared to just one-in-six that do so today. Some companies plan to go one step further and adopt dynamic investment policies or glide paths that increase exposure to fixed income and risk-hedging options as their plan’s funded status improves. Twenty-two percent of employers currently have a glide path strategy in place. By the end of 2014, 30 percent of companies are expected to have embraced this approach.

"The strong market returns of 2013 improved the funded status of many employers‘ pension plans," said Rob Austin, director of Retirement Research at Aon Hewitt. "Implementing an investment policy that mirrors liability movements as underlying economic conditions change allows plan sponsors to lock in these gains. In addition to changing their investment policy, more companies are establishing holistic de-risking strategies to further guard their plan’s funded status and reduce liabilities."   

Aon Hewitt / Report