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(pictured: Oliver Hesketh)  With the Productivity Commission review looking at the efficiency of the super system, including the consideration of scale, and with regulator APRA continuing to focus on size as a potential deliverer of greater efficiencies, wouldn’t you think it would be good to look at the actual evidence? Oliver Hesketh, a partner at…

(pictured: Mark Delaney)  While the investment insourcing trend by big super funds is having a fundamental, and only relatively recent, impact on the structure of the institutional investment industry, Australia remains behind the times, according to Mark Delaney. The CIO of Australian Super, the $100 billion bellwether fund, told the ASFA conference that when his…

(pictured: John Comito) The Australian National University’s endowment fund, which famously sparked a national debate in 2014 with its decision to wind down investments in fossil fuel stocks, has appointed its first custodian after a tender process. NAB Asset Servicing (NAS) was awarded the job which will provide master custody services to the $1.3 billion fund,…

The KiwiSaver cluster-bomb incident should serve as a warning to other jurisdictions, according to global ESG research firm, Sustainalytics. Vanguard and other index providers in New Zealand are already being affected. In a paper published last week, Sustainalytics says the KiwiSaver cluster-bomb debate – that saw a range of providers ultimately change some underlying index…

(pictured: Andrew Mckinnon) Grant Samuel Funds Management will look to broaden the range of its funds for distribution in Australia, as well as offering its locally owned boutiques a new international distribution arm, following the deal with Canada’s CI Financial Corp. The investment bank Grant Samuel Group announced last week that it would sell its…

(pictured: Patrick Farrell)  Pat Farrell, the new CIO at Suncorp, in charge of about $20 billion in multi-manager funds, has put the fixed income and cash mandates currently managed by Nikko Asset Management up for review. Farrell joined Suncorp in late July, following the retirement of Nick Basile. He had previously been the CIO of…

(pictured: Richard Cahill) Richard Cahill, an equities specialist at Mercer Investment Consulting, has left the firm and joined Colonial First State Global Asset Management. The loss of experienced asset consultants to both fund managers and super funds is a worrying industry trend. Cahill has already joined the big fund manager as investment director within the ‘investment specialist’…

(pictured: Michael Aked) When investors think about mean reversion they normally think about asset valuations. They should also think about liquidity, because transaction costs associated with liquidity also mean revert. They are currently at all-time lows and are set to shoot back up. A report by Research Affiliates of the US says that the costs to trade…

(pictured: Eddie Perkin) There is no doubt that the markets have become more jittery in the past two weeks, as the outcome of the US election gets more difficult to predict. Here, three prominent US-based managers have the final say… from this publication, that is. Edward Perkin, chief equity investment officer, Eaton Vance, says that despite…

(pictured: Tony Nejasmic) Automation could reduce New Zealand’s A$30 billion KiwiSaver transfer market to less than a week from the current month-long process, according to Tony Nejasmic, Calastone’s Sydney-based head of business development in Australasia. Nejasmic said last week that the clunky, labour-intensive KiwiSaver member transfer system was ripe for streamlining with a number of providers…