A new report “from the coalface” of super fund investing has gone some way to quantifying the cost of shonky investment management, with members potentially losing out on hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Surging equity markets have driven the Future Fund’s return higher, but its prediction that inflation will be stickier than expected has been born out and it “remains conscious of the potential for significant deterioration”.
New international distributor targets Australian managers
iM Global Partner, an international investment and development platform, plans to enter the Australian market this year. As well as providing Australian firms access to liquid alternatives and smart beta strategies, the firm will also be on the hunt for new Australian fund managers to add to the platform.
iM Global Partner is a boutique which is both an incubator and distributor for managers globally, with offices in Paris and London as well as a new presence in the US where it opened an office in Philadelphia last year.
The move coincides with the appointment of José Castellano as deputy chief executive and head of international business development, reporting to Philippe Couvrecelle, the chief executive and founder. He was previously a director of the Rothschild Asset Management in France and deputy chief executive of Paris-based multi-affiliate manager Ixis Asset Management.
Castellano says in a statement that he has identified Australia as a key growth market and has set his sights on building strategic relationships with Australian institutions and exploring new partnership opportunities, the company said in a statement today. Castellano is responsible for business growth outside of the US.
The business was founded in 2013 and took on three big shareholde4rs in 2015 – Eurazeo, a European private equity investor, Amundi, the largest asset manager in Europe, and Dassault/La Maison, which is the umbrella for a group of private shareholders.
Castellano spent 16 years at Pioneer Investments in a business development role. Pioneer merged with Amundi, Europe’s largest fund manager, in July 2017. He was at Morgan Stanley prior to Pioneer.
iM Global Partern (previously known as iM Square) as a staff of 16 across its three offices. It represents its managers in the institutional market in Europe, the US and Asia, as well as helping them develop multi-channel strategies.
The firm currently has strategic minority investments in four asset managers: Polen Capital; Dolan McEniry Capital Management; Sirios Capital Management; and Dynamic Beta Investments. They have combined assets under management of $31 billion as of November 30, 2018.
– G.B.
