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home » what's new archive » february 2006 What's New: January 31 - February 23
Canada 23 February 2006 - Independent review of OMERS "fairness & effectiveness" to be law A province-wide political protest by more than 100,000 CUPE members was averted February 22 with an 11th hour deal that enshrines in law an independent review of the new OMERS governance structure proposed in Bill 206. Read full story Read more: http://www.ontario.cupe.ca/www/Governance/20201 23 February 2006 - Ontario agrees to review OMERS pension transfer in 2012 The Liberal government of Premier Dalton McGuinty has agreed to a review Bill 206 in 2012 but it will not withdraw the legislation, which transfers control of the $40-billion Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System to municipalities. Read full story Read more: http://www.nupge.ca/news_2006/n23fe06c.htm 23 February 2006 - Jantzi Research and report on Business Magazine focus on CSR performance in retail and food sectors For the third year in a row, Report on Business Magazine has joined with Jantzi Research Inc. to rank companies operating in Canada on their corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance. Read full story Read more: http://www.jantziresearch.com/downloads/ReportonBussinessCSRReport2006.pdf 14 February 2006 - Crisis in Canadian incomes - a dime an hour after 15 years A new report by the Vanier Institute for the Family says real family incomes, discounted for inflation, have risen only 10 cents an hour over the past 15 years. This has happened despite an influx of cash-strapped families entering the labour force. Read full story Read more: http://www.vifamily.ca/library/cft/state05.pdf 8 February 2006 - OPTrust Announces Historic Settlement of Nortel Securities Class Action The OPSEU Pension Trust ("OPTrust") is pleased to announce the conditional settlement of a major U.S. securities class action against Nortel Networks. OPTrust was appointed by United States District Judge Richard M. Berman as sole Lead Plaintiff in this action, which is pending in Federal Court in the Southern District of New York (In Re Nortel Networks Corp. Securities Litigation, 01-CIV-1855) Read full story Read more: http://www.optrust.com/aboutUs/nortel_settlement.asp 8 February 2006 - Teachers' reaches conditional $2.4 billion settlement in Nortel class action The Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Board (OTPP) and several other plaintiffs have reached a historic agreement in principle with Nortel Networks Corporation to settle two major securities-related class actions. The conditional settlement is for approximately $2.4 billion in cash and Nortel common stock (all figures in US dollars and at the current NYSE price). OTPP is a court-appointed Co-Lead Plaintiff in the securities class actions. Read full story Read more: http://www.otpp.com/web/website.nsf/web/nortel_settlement 2 February 2006 - Pensions Committee in process of revising popular Pensions Manual The National Union's Pensions Advisory Committee is currently in the process of completing a major revision of the National Union's Pensions Manual, which is an 'easy to use, everything you wanted to know' guide about pensions and retirement from a union perspective. It was first published in 1995 and is one of the National Union's most popular publications. Read full story Read more: http://www.nupge.ca/issues/pen-n16-feb-02-06.htm 2 February 2006 - Litigation by pension trustees against companies engaged in improper conduct on the rise globally Litigation is proving to be an important vehicle available to institutional investors to obtain extensive and significant corporate governance changes. In fact, recent years have seen a sharp increase in the number of pension funds bringing class action suits against companies engaged in improper conduct that negatively impacts on investments. Read full story Read more: http://www.nupge.ca/issues/pen-n17-feb-02-06.htm 2 February 2006 - Court awards vets $4.6 billion in unpaid interest A legal battle worth billions of dollars has been won on behalf of disabled Canadian veterans. Filed in 1999, the case accused the government of putting the funds of mentally and physically disabled veterans deemed incapable of managing money themselves in non-interest-bearing accounts. Read full story Read more: http://www.nupge.ca/issues/pen-n19-feb-02-06.htm 2 February 2006 - Benefit rates increase for OAS, GIS and CPP as of January 1, 2006 Social Development Canada announced in December the latest benefit rates for the Canada Pension Plan (CPP) and Old Age Security (OAS). Canadians already receiving CPP benefits as of Dec. 2005 got an increase of 2.3 percent on January 1, 2006. Read full story Read more: http://www.nupge.ca/issues/pen-n20-feb-02-06.htm [Jump to: Canada :: The World]
17 February, 2006 - Enron trial - A Texan-sized courtroom drama At last, after more than four years, the biggest corporate scandal of them all finally goes to trial. It is said that everything is bigger in Texas. Houston-based Enron’s success certainly was larger than life until it hit an iceberg of fraud and deceit and started to unravel in 2001. And now, the final legal chapter in this long saga of malfeasance and piracy is being dubbed the "mother of all corporate fraud trials". Read full story Read more: http://www.ethicalcorp.com/content_list.asp?m=ct&ct=37 16 February, 2006 - Public 401(k)? CalPERS says no Moving to defend traditional public pension plans, trustees of the California Public Employees' Retirement System are poised to fight a renewed effort to offer 401(k)-style programs to state and local government workers. Read full story Read more: http://www.calcsea.org/president/pension_attack/20060216-401k.asp 10 February, 2006 - Pension funds favour commodities Pension funds, whose conservative investment strategies lend asset classes an air of respectability, are allocating increasingly to commodities as the market for resources continues to heat up. California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS) is mulling over allocations to oil and metals, while Hermes (for BT's pension fund) is expecting to start allocating by mid-2006. Read full story Read more: http://www.trustnet.com/general/news/display-story.asp?id=75063&db=pension 31 January, 2006 - Two Sides of the Same Coin: Surveys Track Growth of Interest in SRI and CSR SocialFunds.com -- There is a growing body of evidence of rising interest in social responsibility in the marketplace. On the one hand, a survey by Mercer Investment Consulting of US institutional investors finds increasing interest in socially responsible investing (SRI). On the other hand, a McKinsey Quarterly survey of corporate executives globally finds mounting commitment to corporate social responsibility (CSR). The fact that these surveys find essentially the same pulse for SRI and CSR should come as no surprise, as the two are like twins, separate entities with distinct identities but common origins and parallel paths. Read full story Read more: http://www.socialfunds.com/news/article.cgi/article1917.html [Jump to: Canada :: United States]
25 February, 2006 - Bank Policies Fail to Meet International Social and Environmental Standards, Report Says SocialFunds.com -- If banks were students, the majority would be failing the sustainability test. In a January 2006 report by BankTrack, a global nongovernmental organizations (NGO) coalition including WWF-UK, Friends of the Earth (FoE), Rainforest Action Network (RAN), and the Berne Declaration, 21 of 39 banks' financing policies earn a failing grade. The grading system ranges from 0 (no publicly available policy) to 4 (policy meets almost all international standards), with average scores across 13 environmental and... Read full story Read more: http://www.socialfunds.com/news/article.cgi/1937.html 17 February 2006 - Life industry pensions proposals threaten to freeze out the competition The life industry's alternative to Turner's Pensions Commission proposals will create a cartel of life groups running billions in pension assets with little or no real competitive pressure. Both Turner's proposals and the industry's seem united on one point: fund management groups and intermediaries alike have no place in mass market pension provision of the future. In their vision, such groups bring nothing to the party bar an unwelcome uplift in the cost of the operation. Read full story Read more: http://trustnet.com/general/news/display-story.asp?db=pension&id=75192 7 February 2006 - Pension age 'set to rise' in 2020 Some increase in the state pension age from 2020 is "inevitable", the Work and Pensions Secretary John Hutton says. The minister was speaking at a conference organised by the think tank, The Work Foundation. Read full story Read more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4689528.stm 6 February, 2006 - Chile's failed experiment with privatized pension system Chile’s dreadfully inadequate and much copied privatized pension system became a central issue in the Chilean national election earlier this month. Read full story Read more: http://www.nupge.ca/issues/pen-n18-feb-02-06.htm 2 February, 2006 - UKSIF calls on government to seize "historic opportunity" to build an investment culture that recognises responsibility and environmental limits The UK Social Investment Forum (UKSIF) has today called on the government to seize the "historic opportunity" offered now to bring together its major long-term commitments to pension reform and to leadership in sustainable development. This is needed to deliver sustainable and responsible investment of pension savings, it claims. Read full story Read more: http://www.uksif.org/Z/Z/Z/lib/2006/02/02-press-pensref/index.shtml |
