NZ’s largest community trust, Foundation North, will move to rein-in exposure to private assets after a stellar year saw exposure to the sector blow-out almost 5 per cent above the top-end of its target allocation. According to the Foundation North annual report released last week, the community trust’s private assets accounted for almost 20 per…
Dutch asset management giant, Robeco, tips a mainly positive, if subdued, outlook for equities over the next five years but with a high degree of uncertainty ahead in a decade it dubs the ‘Roasting Twenties’. In its new five-year forecast returns paper, Robeco says “we expect risk-taking to be rewarded in the next five years,…
Investors looking to arbitrage index ins-and-outs would have seen shrinking rewards for their efforts over the last 25 years based on the findings of a new S&P Dow Jones Indices (S&PDJI) paper. The S&P study found a “structural decline” in the so-called ‘index effect’ where share prices bounce up on entering key market benchmarks and…
Family office portfolios could see massive underperformance ahead with most well-overweight cash, according to the latest Citi Private Bank global survey of the sector. David Bailin, Citi Global Wealth chief investment officer, said about a third of family offices in the survey reported cash holdings of 20 per cent or more while a further third…
Global securities trading back-office behemoth Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) has scheduled a live launch of a new blockchain-based settlement system for early next year. The DTCC blockchain – or distributed ledger technology (DLT) – service will enable a “netted T+0 settlement cycle” for US equities, the largest and most-liquid share market in the…
Global central banks are developing a stronger appetite for external fund managers to oversee a wide range of asset classes held on their ballooning balance sheets, a new study has found. According to the 2021 Global Public Investor (GPI) survey produced by the Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum (OMFIF), central banks “are becoming far…
Sir Michael Cullen, the political force behind the establishment of NZ Super and the KiwiSaver scheme, has died at 76 after a battle with cancer. The NZ Labour politician, deputy prime minister and finance minister, will likely be remembered more widely for his liberal views, including legalised euthanasia, and generosity of spirit towards the less…
Imminent climate disclosure obligations could dent fund manager profits by up to 1 per cent while increasing retail manager fees as much as 2.2 per cent, according to an NZ Government report. Analysis by New Zealand’s Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) was released along with the final select committee report on the Financial…
A new academic paper has labeled most investment strategy research as statistically flawed, equating finance industry back-tested analyses with the now-debunked historical medical studies funded by ‘big tobacco’. In the study titled ‘Finance is not excused: why finance should not flout basic principles of statistics‘, authors David Bailey and Marcos de Prado, argue that the…
Aon has put its KiwiSaver and employer master trust schemes on the block, according to industry sources. It is understood Aon has circulated an investment memorandum seeking interest in the group’s two schemes, which collectively manage about $920 million split between the $730 million KiwiSaver and $190 million master trust. The move represents the first…
