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”.
A number of super funds managing less than $10 billion have been slugged with an increase in their restricted APRA levy of more than 80 per cent even as the regulator pushes them to keep costs down.
… as Mercer lets go of Ray King’s alternatives position
(Pictured: Ray King)
Ray King has left Mercer Investments, where he has been a partner and senior consultant in the private markets and alternatives area for the past three years since Mercer acquired his former consulting firm, Sovereign Investment Research.
His departure followed a restructure among Mercer’s alternatives teams internationally due to the amalgamation with the recently acquired specialist private markets advisory firm and fund manager SCM Strategic Capital Management of Switzerland.
Mercer’s purchase of SCM was closed in early March, adding about 20 alternatives specialists to Mercer’s 30. It gave SCM a presence for the first time in the US and Australia and added US$4 billion of alternatives assets under management to Mercer’s US$13 billion. Overall, Mercer had about US$110 billion under management at the time it announced it would acquire SCM last November.
Like Mercer, SCM started out providing advice to funds and then diversified into the provision of investment vehicles for its smaller clients. It still provides advice and builds bespoke portfolios for larger pension funds.
King, who had been one of the early senior staff at what is now Frontier Advisors (formerly IFS Consulting), formed Sovereign Investment research in 2000 to concentrate on the alternatives space. Big clients included Sunsuper. He said last week that he had no immediate plans.
Mercer has had a checkered history with consulting staff in alternatives. The firm let go of its Sydney-based global head of alternatives, Dragna Timotijevic, in November 2012 after she had spent eight years with the firm.
