by Matthew Peter (Chief Economist) and Jimmy Louca, CFA (Senior Economist) On the heels of a sharp public reaction to last year’s budget, the Federal Government’s prescription this year focused on growth and assistance for low-to-middle income earners. There was a small expansion in the deficit but the budget is still projected to return to surplus…
(George Lucas) In a big week for fintech, three launches were announced in the past few days: SuiteBox, a cloud-based video-conferencing and document sharing service for financial advisors; Australia’s first ‘micro-savings’ smartphone-activated investment vehicle; and, a dedicated online publication focused on fintech hopefuls. At the same time, concerns about capital raisings for tech start-ups in…
(Jon Sage) While smart beta strategies have been attracting a lot of interest from investors, there are other ways to capitalise on quantitative factors in markets with the additional protection afforded by fundamental analysis. A recent paper by MFS Investment Management demonstrates this. MFS, which is best known in Australia for its flagship fundamental global…
(Ross Israel) QIC has expanded its infrastructure firepower with a landmark partnership with CalPERS, whereby the giant US pension fund is committing about A$1 billion to deals in Asia Pacific that will be sourced and managed by the Australian fund manager. It will be the first time that the US$300 billion fund – the largest…
(Stephen Dunne)Â Two big industry funds have recruited an economist, Brian Parker, and a senior researcher, Andrew Baker, while AMP Capital’s long-time managing director, Stephen Dunne, announced his retirement from later this year and John Phokos left NSW Workcover. Sunsuper has recruited Brian Parker, an economist who has been with the NAB group for about…
Comment by Greg Bright Disruption in financial services from new technologies and new – and some old – participants is being talked about everywhere: in the financial media, in the general media, at industry conferences, including our own My Platform Rules, and, most importantly, in the capital-raising marketplace. But what does this really mean? Is…
(Anne-Marie Corboy) If there’s one thing that women – and probably men – can learn from Anne-Marie Corboy’s career in super and elsewhere it is: “give it a go”. She told the annual Women In Super (WIS) lunch in Sydney last week not to automatically take the safe option: “You need failures to understand success”….
(Al Jalso) Russell Investments has added two new managers to its international fixed interest fund while reducing allocations to incumbents and layering on a novel currency “positioning strategy”. Al Jalso, Russell global bond fund portfolio manager, said the revised approach reflects the need to manage liquidity, introduce further diversity and add value in an increasingly…
(Andy Flynn) While super funds have been enthusiastic investors in separate domestic small-cap mandates alongside their broad-market Aussie equities strategies, they have not been so keen, historically, on separate global small caps to accompany global core equity mandates. Andy Flynn, of William Blair, made a good case last week for a change of heart. Andy…
(Darrell Ludowyke) Empirics, the data specialist business which is part of the Link Group, has launched a new service for super funds and other organisations to help them better assess sentiment, problems and other information being discussed by their members and clients. Empirics has been working on data from social media and other digital sources…
