On 11 October, Sven Giegold (member of the European Parliament’s ECON Committee) reacted to the European Commission’s (EC) communication on the completion of the Banking Union (BU) in a Post on his blog. In particular, Giegold criticises the proposed interim steps to be taken in order to pass from the 1st to the 2nd phase
9 October 2017 – BETTER FINANCE, the European Federation of Investors and Financial Services Users, launched the fifth edition of its annual Pension Savings Report. Started in 2013, the annual research report undertakes an analysis of European pension investment funds and State pensions schemes, in order to provide the European citizen with the ‘real figures’
Guillaume Prache, Managing Director of BETTER FINANCE, has been recently quoted in the FT discussing the impact and importance of consumer investment regulation, including the Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive and the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive II: “Most funds covered are actually retail long-only ones – for example, in France, there are 3,500 domiciled
The World Federation of Investors (WFI), the Spanish Association of Minority Shareholders of Listed Companies (AEMEC, one of BETTER FINANCE’s members) and BETTER FINANCE have stated that the swap transaction that took place between CaixaBank and its controlling shareholder, Criteria, lacks transparency and adequate information to the detriment of minority shareholders of CaixaBank. Indeed small
Dismally low returns on EU pension fund investments over 15 years? The allegation comes in a study by BETTER FINANCE, the European Federation of Investors & Financial Services Users. The report, Pensions Savings: The Real Return, points to excessive fees, points to other charges, and badly framed taxation rules, as the culprits. “Pension savings did
Morningstar, the investment research provider, put the finger on the weak spot. Its latest findings on the UK fund market show that the number of "closet tracker" funds that charge high fees for active management – while in reality they simply follow an index – has more than doubled in the UK in the last 12 months. Quoted in last Sunday’s edition
On October 4th, BETTER FINANCE’s newest report on the performance of pension funds in eight EU countries was covered in an article in The Economist. Focusing on the conclusions of the report, the article stresses European savers have suffered terrible returns from pension funds while European authorities “do not know the actual performance of the services they are
Guillaume Prache, Managing Director at BETTER FINANCE, was quoted in Investment Europe following his contribution to EFAMA’s report “Building Blocks for Industry Driven Investor Education Initiatives”. He stressed that "most consumers tend to be educated about finance at the point of sale, rather than at school". At the same time, Prache pointed out that "four decades ago, households
EuroFinUse was quoted by the Financial News on the Regulation for Key Information Documents (KID) for investment products. Juan Manuel Viver, EuroFinUse’s Policy Officer, spoke on the fragmentation of MEPs’ views on the scope for the KID Regulation. Read the full article here
In an article published in the Financial Times, Madison Marriage reveals the names of 3 fund managers who have changed their fund documents after being accused of flouting EU rules that require fund managers to tell clients how they performed against their chosen benchmarks. EU law provides that funds that have a benchmark must disclose