Private markets assets are “ripe for the picking” for fund managers and administrators quick to use distributed ledger technology, as investment operations are on the cusp of “great change”. So said David Mackaway, the COO of Challenger Group, at the Calastone ‘Connect Forum’ last week (December 2. He was interviewed by Justin Christopher, Calastone director…
Fund managers are subject to behavioural biases like all of us, such as over-confidence, short-termism and memory distortions. Take their predictive abilities. They are not, on average, especially good. In a unique report for clients, Frontier has published what amounts to a longitudinal study based on eight years of conversations, surveys and other communications with…
BNP Paribas is to lose its head of securities services for Australia and New Zealand and State Street is losing three senior executives in unrelated developments which emerged last week. David Braga, the chief executive of BNP Paribas Securities Services, Australasia, has resigned and will leave the organisation at Christmas. He is currently continuing at…
There has been a growing feeling among investors that sustainability is good – certainly not bad – for returns. Now, following the latest report by Sustainable Platform, there should be no further argument. The analysis, which includes rankings of the top 1,000 performing companies globally, as well as the bottom 1,000, shows that on a…
Even the strong trend towards ESG investing, overlaid with heightened interest in climate-related strategies, has failed to halt the decline in funds management fees. The latest biennial study by global mandate search and research consultancy bfinance shows that fee compression has caught up with global ESG equities over the past five years, the average mandate…
Apex Group, the global administrator and fintech which last month took the reins at Australia’s Mainstream, has notched up another, more eclectic, milestone, mixing ESG with cricket. Apex, which has a strong West Indian connection through the domicile of its chief executive and founder, Peter Hughes, became the ‘Official Sustainability Partner’ for the West Indies…
If super fund investment staff didn’t appreciate the importance of indices prior to the introduction of YFYS, they should do now. With fixed income, the indices tell an interesting, and in some ways counterintuitive, story. Notwithstanding the continued popularity of absolute returns-based portfolios, especially with the end investors, the new fund performance test implemented by…
Big Australian investors have never been very fond of taking geographical bets in their portfolios. Just ask a marketing person about selling Asia ex-Japan, for instance; even in the ‘Asian Century’. There are good reasons for why they shouldn’t, the main one being that geographies limit an investor’s universe. A good investment is a good…
The world’s largest state-owned funds have accelerated their allocations to renewables and lifted their targets for net-zero portfolios but, so far, their investments have been “miniscule”, according to the latest report by Global SWF. In a special edition of its monthly newsletter coinciding with this month’s COP26 meeting, the institutional investment research firm calculates that…
Ben Phillips has left Casey Quirk, the specialist funds management consulting arm of Deloitte, after 13 years with the business. He has taken a role blending new technologies with investment data on a grand scale. The role, as head of asset management for ‘Global Advisory Services’ with fintech giant Broadridge Financial Solutions, aims to build…
