This year’s annual conference featured speakers and panels on key topics, including a critical perspective on the operation of financial markets in which pension funds participate, the nature and implications for pension funds of the recently enacted financial markets reform legislation; the current and future landscape of those who provide financial services to funds, the relationship between pension fund boards and their staff, consultants, and asset managers, the progress and impact of corporate governance reforms, efforts to sustain public sector pension plans both currently and with any eye to the future, and the challenge of retirement income security for all households. [More Info]
Paul Booth Executive Assistant to the President, AFSCME
Opening Remarks by Paul Booth, Executive Assistant to the President, AFSCME:"Miles Rapoport is the president of Demos. What is Demos? There is an awful lot of Demos material out on the table there, and you really should indulge freely in it. To me, Demos is simply the leading voice in the United States for small d democracy. Its mission, as I see it, is this cause which it so ably advances.
Miles Rapoport has a career that included personal involvement in Connecticut politics, to which he brought activism, organizational skills, and a set of real deep commitments."
Among the topics on which this year’s Capital Matters conference focused were systemic risk and its pension fund and other implications, various aspects of pension fund risk management, a rethinking of fiduciary duty, an assessment of the success of capital stewardship, challenges faced by employment-based retirement plans and the broader challenge of retirement security for all households, and the new landscape of pension fund investment in infrastructur0 .[More Info]
The Project worked with the European Trade Union Institute (ETUI) and the Trade Union Advisory Committee to the OECD (TUAC) (with the Global Unions Committee on Workers Capital as a knowledge partner) to convene a meeting modeled on the Project’s annual “Capital Matters: Managing Labor’s Capital Conference.” This one-day event, “Capital Maters in Europe 2009,” took place in Brussels on December 10th. It brought together member-nominated pension fund trustees, trade union officers, pension and other experts and policy makers who offered views and shared experiences from across Europe and from a transatlantic perspective. It focused on how workers’ and their families’ retirement and other long term savings can be invested in productive assets in the real economy in a fair, sustainable and responsible way and not diverted into unproductive financial transactions and speculation. [More]
The Pensions Project held its 7th annual “Capital Matters: Managing Labor’s Capital” conference on April 29 – May 1, 2009. Many of the sessions related to the challenges posed by the world- wide financial and economic meltdown but also the opportunities. For example, the conference opened with a European labor perspective on the impact on how the financial and economic meltdown has played out in European financial markets and economies, the diverse responses of European Union countries and perspectives on financial markets regulation. [More]
On March 27-28th the Pensions and Capital Stewardship Project convened a meeting on “Long-term Investment Decisions: Assessing the Sustainability Risks of Labor and Human Rights and other Workplace Factors.” The meeting brought together about 45 people from major U.S. and European pension funds, investment management, advisory, and research firms, accounting firms, labor and human rights groups, unions, and academics. The goal was to hold a workshop-style event to exchange ideas about how investors can begin to measure a wide range of workplace-related factors and analyze their potential materiality to long-term portfolio returns. The meeting covered a range of topics, including labor and human rights in global supply chains; human capital factors such as employee ownership, teams, and high-performance work systems; and shareholder engagement actions on such issues. The discussion yielded recommendations for research in a broad range of topics; proposals for practical action by participants, such as the establishment of a network to exchange information and ideas; and the application of those findings to investment decision-making and possible engagement with corporations. [More]
The discussion included trustees and officials of public sector and Taft-Hartley pension plans, pension and policy experts, union officials and staff, investment practitioners, and scholars. The meeting canvassed the federal policy landscape of...
"The Fortune Teller,"
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, c 1595
LOCUSTS VERSUS LABOR: HANDLING THE NEW CAPITALISM
TURMOIL IN FINANCIAL MARKETS: CAUSES, CONSEQUENCES, AND CHOICES
CORPORATE GOVERNANCE REFORM: WHAT DIFFERENCE HAS IT MADE OR COULD IT MAKE FOR WORKERS?
LABOR IN CAPITAL MARKETS: SQUARE PEGS AND ROUND HOLES
PENSION FUND (AND OTHERS’) ENGAGEMENT ON CORPORATE LABOR AND HUMAN RIGHTS PRACTICES
SHOULD A PENSION FUND MAKE PROPERTY INVESTMENTS THAT ARE LABOR FRIENDLY? IF SO, HOW?
CAPITAL STEWARDSHIP WITHIN AND ACROSS BORDERS: CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES
NOVEL, YET PRACTICAL SOLUTIONS TO RETIREMENT SYSTEMS WOES: THE DUTCH AND OTHER EXPERIENCE ABROAD; A NEW APPROACH TO EMPLOYMENT-BASED PENSIONS; A NEW APPROACH TO RETIREMENT SECURITY FOR ALL
WHAT TO DO WHILE WAITING FOR UNIVERSAL HEALTH INSURANCE: ARE VEBAS AND OTHER PRE-FUNDED SCHEMES PART OF THE SOLUTION OR PART OF THE PROBLEM? [More]
This year’s annual conference featured speakers and panels on key topics, including a critical perspective on the operation of financial markets in which pension funds participate, the nature and implications for pension funds of the recently enacted financial markets reform legislation; the current and future landscape of those who provide financial services to funds, the relationship between pension fund boards and their staff, consultants, and asset managers, the progress and impact of corporate governance reforms, efforts to sustain public sector pension plans both currently and with any eye to the future, and the challenge of retirement income security for all households.
Among the topics on which this year’s Capital Matters conference focused were systemic risk and its pension fund and other implications, various aspects of pension fund risk management, a rethinking of fiduciary duty, an assessment of the success of capital stewardship, challenges faced by employment-based retirement plans and the broader challenge of retirement security for all households, and the new landscape of pension fund investment in infrastructur0
The Pensions Project held its 7th annual “Capital Matters: Managing Labor’s Capital” conference on April 29 – May 1, 2009. Many of the sessions related to the challenges posed by the world- wide financial and economic meltdown but also the opportunities. For example, the conference opened with a European labor perspective on the impact on how the financial and economic meltdown has played out in European financial markets and economies, the diverse responses of European Union countries and perspectives on financial markets regulation.
