For most pension plans, the short bursts of hard,
unpleasant work known as portfolio transitions are an
infrequent event—maybe one episode every three or four years,
assuming all goes well with the investment managers
By the time you read this column, the Olympics will
be a distant memory. Despite the challenges of trying to keep
up with events that are occurring halfway around the world,
there have been exciting finishes and new world records (and
the ability to catch it all at a more convenient hour via the
Internet).
We all have them: those front-line experiences that
are inevitable when one deals with the variety—and
sensitivity—of issues associated with human beings and
critical life events.
In July, the Department of Labor published its
much-anticipated proposed participant fee disclosure
regulations. A week later, I asked readers for their
perspectives on the matter.
Adding alternative asset classes, such as real
estate, to traditional portfolios usually aims for two
intended results: to boost returns by exploiting new types of
risks, or to reduce volatility by adding uncorrelated
returns.
To help sponsors make sense of the biggest money
management product push of the new century, earlier this
year, PLANSPONSOR reached out to managers offering the new
strategies known variously as "long-short
extension" or "130/30" funds.
Amid a tough economy, a lot of employers that did
big human-resources outsourcing deals in the past few years
are now rethinking them, says Denise LaForte, a Chicago-based
Senior Consultant at Watson Wyatt Worldwide.
Middle-income Americans now retiring will have to
reduce their standard of living by an average of 24% to avoid
outliving their financial assets, a new study
finds.
Craig Wangberger v. Janus Capital Group,
Incorporated; Plan Advisory Committee, and Charles Schwab
Trust Company; Advisory Committee; Steven L. Scheid; G.
Andrew Cox; Paul F. Balser
Almost from the moment federal regulators announced
they intended to beef up required plan disclosures, the
message they heard most often from retirement services
industry members was simple: One size disclosure does not fit
all.
Under current rules, if an employer sponsors a
"tax-qualified" plan—a DB plan or a 401(k) plan—the
employer gets a deduction when it makes a contribution to the
plan, but the employee does not recognize income until he or
she actually gets paid.
Winston Churchill once said that America and Britain
were "two nations divided by a common language."
It's a division exacerbated by our habit of using the
same words to mean different things on opposite sides of the
Atlantic—such as, in the financial sector, the expression
"absolute return fund."
