Life Settlements & Traded Life Policies News

Partial Break Up of Euro ‘Inevitable’ in 2012, says MPL

The single biggest issue stalking global equity markets at present is the Euro crisis. The threat of a liquidity breakdown and recession in Europe is restraining equities at a time when Asia is booming and many corporates around the world are sitting on healthy balance sheets.

Investors are worried about the disruption that would follow from a break up of the euro and that if any one of the vulnerable countries – Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain – were to default then the others would follow.

My own view is that a partial break up of the Euro is inevitable, with Greece the most likely to default and leave the single currency this year. Whether that would lead to a domino effect remains to be seen, but a clash of political and economic factors means Greece will ultimately have no choice in the matter.

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Partial Break Up of Euro ‘Inevitable’ in 2012

MPL Reassures on Life Settlement Fund Solvency

FT Advisor.com, Managing Partners News
December 13th, 2011

Managing Partners Limited (MPL) has reassured investors that its life settlements fund remains solvent, after the FSA’s clampdown on the products.

MPL said its Cayman-based $165m (£105.5m) Traded Policies fund was “completely solvent” last week and continued to hold cash levels that were above the group’s minimum threshold of 5 per cent.

Jeremy Leach, managing director of MPL, said the fund had not seen any surge in redemptions.

The $995m Guernsey-based EEA Life Settlements fund on November 30 suspended dealing after the FSA issued a consultation proposing to ban the sale of “toxic” life settlement funds to retail investors, triggering a wave of redemption requests.

Mr Leach said the UK was not the MPL fund’s primary market and so it was “business as usual” for the firm.

“The vast majority of our investors are institutional and sophisticated, so we see any fallout as quite manageable,” he said.

He said the company was surprised that the FSA had labelled traded life policies as a “toxic” asset.

“It is not an accurate description of policies that are invariably rated A and above, that are issued by US-regulated life insurance companies, government backed (by virtue of state guarantees) and the trade of which is a regulated activity in the vast majority of US states,” he said.

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MPL Reassures on Life Settlement Fund Solvency