Norway’s sovereign-wealth fund, the world’s biggest, topped a $1 trillion valuation after the best half-year return in its history.
In the first half of 2017, the Government Pension Fund Global (GPFG) made 499 billion kroner ($63 billion), a 2.6% return on its investments, the best half-year return in its history, the fund announced on Tuesday.
Three public pension funds, including the Orange County Employees Retirement System, have sued a half-dozen Wall Street banks, alleging they illegally conspired to control a corner of the stock market, leading to higher charges for the funds and thus less money for retirees.
The fifth annual Global Retirement Index ranking from Natixis Global Asset Management has Norway, Switzerland, and Iceland holding on to the top three slots from 2016. The ranking creates an overall retirement security score for each country from 18 performance indicators that address finances, healthcare, material well-being, and quality of life. Countries are also ranked by those four sub-indexes. Switzerland has consistently topped the rankings since the index was launched five years ago.
Swiss pensioners should be given the option to draw down higher levels of pension income on a time-limited basis, according to Willis Towers Watson. According to consultancy, the best option is the portion of pension savings capital that exceeds the minimum cover prescribed by law.
It proposed the model in response to falling conversion rates, which are used to calculate how much pensioners can take as income from their pensions every year. It was pitched as a means of alleviating pressure on pension providers and offering flexibility and fairness for pensioners.
Swiss state pension fund Publica said it will divest from five weapons companies in response to an ongoing campaign by the Swiss Association for Responsible Investments (SVVK – ASIR) to blacklist 15 international arms manufacturers.
According to Swiss public radio, the CHF37 billion ($38 billion) Publica, Switzerland’s biggest pension fund, is selling off its stakes in five arms manufacturers from its investment portfolio. However, the fund wouldn’t specify which firms would be affected. Publica currently has 63,000 people paying in to the fund and 43,000 recipients, mainly government civil servants and employees at the federal institutes of technology. Last September the government revealed that federal investments in arms manufacturers amounted to CHF110 million, or 0.3% of the total fortune of the Publica state pension fund.
Switzerland’s occupational pensions association has decided to back the country’s reform package, AV2020. During its general assembly last week, ASIP announced its support for the proposals agreed in parliament earlier this year, after seeking its members’ opinions on the Altersvorsorge 2020/Prévoyance vieillesse 2020 (AV2020/PV2020) reform package.
After considerable back-and-forth, the reform was approved in March. Next, Switzerland’s population will decide on the reform package in a binding referendum on 24 September.
At a meeting last week, CPEG, the pension fund for the Swiss canton of Geneva, has unveiled a set of structural measures to improve its funding level that could have the effect of cutting future pension benefits by up to 15%. The committee which manages the CHF12bn (€11bn) fund (employee, pensioner, and employer representatives) confirmed a plan to raise the age at which members can take a full pension from 64 to 65 as of 1 January 2018.
In the same occasion, it released the decision to lower the target pension level. The pension fund said this measure would be accompanied by other technical measures of less importance, but the cumulative effect could be a lowering of pension benefits by up to 15% for active members.
Generally, investing in smaller companies is riskier than investing in larger companies. Large caps tend to be less volatile during rough markets as investors fly to quality and become more risk-averse. The long-term statistics certainly suggest that smaller companies do indeed outperform larger ones.
Mid caps lie between large cap stocks and small cap stocks.
In Europe the Eurostoxx Mid Index, has historically outperformed the broader Stoxx 600 Index, and in the last bull market started in 2009, the real gap in the performance between the two indexes, started in 2013, as we can see in the graph below where it is represented in the upper side the relative strength of the Eurostoxx Mid Index versus the Stoxx 600 Index, and in the lower side the historical performance of the two indexes.
