Tag Archives: Con Keating

Inconvenient truths – Clacher and Keating

On Thursday 21st September, the ONS released the results of the latest results of the Financial Survey of Pension Schemes, which reports on occupational pension schemes to the end of March 2023.[1] From this, it is evident that the rebalancing … Continue reading

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Thames Water – spinning out of control – Con Keating on its 2022 accounts

  Thames Water published its 2022/23 reports today. You can access them here.   These are some initial thoughts, from a first reading of the annual report, published this morning. The co-CEO of Thames Water was interviewed on this morning’s … Continue reading

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The real cost of de-risking ; Keating and Clacher’s submission to parliament

This is Con Keating’s and Iain Clacher’s submission to the Work and Pensions Committe’s call for evidence on “Defined benefit pensions with Liability Driven Investments”. Written in March of this year, it represents an important perspective on the subject that … Continue reading

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DB Scheme Funding: Some Empirical Results and Consideration

  We have been collecting the reported funding ratios of DB schemes since December 2022. Through this analysis we are finding some fairly large discrepancies between reported funding ratios and the widely broadcast narrative of highly significant improvements of those … Continue reading

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“So what’s a pretty ILG doing here, then?” The indexed linked gilt’s called to account.

This blog looks at how index-linked gilts came to be and asks what they are doing in LDI portfolios – its authors are Jon Spain and Con Keating In 1980, the Wilson Report was published, recommending that the UK government … Continue reading

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Benefits will be restored at USS but will common sense?

UCU members in their tens of thousands have voted overwhelmingly to move forward with pension proposals agreed with employers which will pave the way for the restoration of benefits. When we launched our pensions dispute, university vice chancellors doubted us, … Continue reading

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Portfolio Resilience – the transition to LDI II

Advocates of Liability Driven Investment (LDI) have been busy reassuring the authorities that LDI no longer constitutes a threat to financial stability. They have been doing this, in increasing volume and frequency since the end of the Bank of England … Continue reading

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Who’s in regulatory control of DB pensions?

The Financial Policy Committee’s recommendation is that the Pensions Regulator is re-equipped with another statutory objective, to become pension’s agent for the Bank’s work on financial stability. For departing CEO, Charles Counsell, this means a handover to incoming CEO Nausicaa … Continue reading

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USS and Exhaustion – Con Keating

  Shortly after it was published in early March by USS, I was asked to review their note “USS briefing: Capital funding and exhaustion risk – distribution of outcomes”. The stated reason for it was: “This briefing note provides details … Continue reading

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USS – Con Keating

    I do not envy the task of the new CEO of USS, though I must state that I have no insight who this might be. Over the past decade, the governance of USS has degenerated into a disgrace, … Continue reading

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