NEW GUIDELINES FOR PENSION MANAGERS - These are difficult investment times for anyone contributing to a pension fund. That is the backdrop for new guidelines from the Irish Association of Pension Funds on what should happen to a contributor's pension fund assets in the years before retirement.
Usually - about five years before retirement - trustees move money out of equities into guaranteed income investments to protect the growth of the previous few decades.
IAPF director of policy Jerry Moriarty says the new guidelines ask trustees to consider the needs of members and measure risk in relation to those needs, paying particular attention to those in the ten years before retirement.
He says trustees should look at switching such people towards cash or safer investments in case there is a stock markets slump.
Mr Moriarty says Irish pension funds are overweight in Irish shares, which have suffered badly from the stock market turbulence in recent months. A conference today will look at alternative investments such as climate change companies.
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PENSIONS BOARD CASE A 'LANDMARK' - The Pensions Board yesterday secured a High Court judgement against a construction company for failing to pay pension contributions.
The board's Mary Hutch described it as a landmark case in pension protection. The company, Limestone Construction, had failed to put contributions it had deducted from workers' pay into their pension scheme.
She said the board raided the firm's premises, along with accountants and IT specialists. The board went through its computer and payroll records, which showed that €186,000 of contributions had been 'effectively stolen'. This affected more than 200 employees..
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NEWS AND CURRENCIES - Struggling Swiss bank UBS has written down another $19 billion on the value of its assets, causing a net loss of $12 billion for the first quarter of this year. It also said it would seek $15 billion in new capital through a rights issue of shares.
The euro is worth $1.5670 and 79.22p sterling.
