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(Pictured: Lynelle Briggs) John Coombs has retired from the board of Maritime Super after 20 years with the fund. The former boss of the Maritime Union of Australia, who famously defied the Government by refusing to let radioactive waste cross the docks, is being replaced by Lynelle Briggs, a former chief executive of Medicare. Briggs, a…

(Pictured: David Adiseshan) David Adiseshan’s Southern Cross Financial Advisers is co-hosting a symposium on the US Venture Capital market and its opportunities for Australian investors with the US Consulate General in Sydney and Melbourne, April 21 and 22. Invitees are mainly super funds and family offices. Southern Cross is a division of the financial planning group…

(Pictured: Adrian Stewart) by Greg Bright PIMCO will be rolling out several new fixed income strategies to the retail market, following its decision announced last week to insource retail distribution back from Equity Trustees (EQT), its long-time partner. The world’s biggest bond manager has also strengthened its institutional distribution team. Adrian Stewart, Australian country head, said…

(Pictured: Ross Chapin) Parametric Portfolio Associates, the after-tax and implementation-efficiency manager, is to introduce a range of index funds in Australia as well as its global emerging markets capability as it prepares, also, to enter the high-net-worth market. On a regular visit to Australia last week, Ross Chapin, a managing director and head of strategy, said…

(Pictured: Warren Chant) The finalists of the Chant West 2015 Super Fund Awards have been announced by the research house Chant West. The fund ratings firm has announced finalists across 12 categories, including Super and Pension Funds of the Year. Seven industry funds, three retail and commercial multi-manager funds, one public sector fund and one corporate…

(Pictured: Paul Harrison) by David Chaplin Boutique New Zealand manager Salt Funds Management has won perhaps the largest New Zealand equities mandate on record, scooping up NZ$690 million (A$670 million) from AMP Capital NZ, doubling the small firm’s FUM in the process. Paul Harrison, Salt director, said the AMP mandate provided scale for the firm, whose…

(Pictured: Danielle Press) by Patrick Liddy Winston Churchill stated that “Meeting Franklin Roosevelt was like opening your first bottle of champagne; knowing him was like drinking it.” You meet people like that in business occasionally. They show different thinking in their industries and are able to apply this to complex issues. It even happens, from time…

(Pictured: Jacob Mitchell) Pinnacle Investment Management will establish an offshore distribution capability following the addition to its line-up of the latest high-profile boutique, Jacob Mitchell’s Antipodes Partners, a global equities and Asian equities manager based in Sydney. Mitchell started his new business last week, with six colleagues and about $200 million under management, inherited, thanks to…

(Pictured: Andy Budden) In a timely fund launch, Capital Group has introduced its ‘World Dividend Growers’ strategy to both retail and institutional investors in Australia, emphasising the need for yield investments for both short-term cyclical reasons and long-term demographic ones. Investors have been focused on yield for the past several years because of record low interest…

(Pictured: Anne Richards) by Greg Bright Anne Richards, the global CIO of Aberdeen Asset Management, is nothing if not versatile. Last week she spoke at the Women on Boards annual ‘diversity’ index launch in Sydney to a wide media audience, and then two days later presented on trends in retirement incomes at the CMSF conference on…