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(Pictured: Patrick Noble) Zurich Financial Services Australia has secured a model portfolio inclusion from a major institutionally owned dealer group, with its global share fund. The fund searches for earnings a little differently to those of other managers. Rather than following investment norms by focusing on the overall level and duration of a stock’s earnings growth,…

(Pictured: Gorky Urquieta) by Penny Pryor There are still opportunities in both emerging market debt and emerging market equities according to portfolio managers at global fund manager Neuberger Berman. In Australia recently to meet with clients, co-head of emerging markets debt, Gorky Urquieta, said that the team did not really subscribe to the view that there…

(Pictured: Paul Costello) Paul Costello, the founding chief executive of the Future Fund, has joined the board of Qantas Super, taking the spot vacated by Australia’s new Governor General, and knight, Sir Peter Cosgrove. In a perhaps-unavoidable understatement, Anne Ward, Qantas Super’s chair, said: “Paul brings a wealth of experience in investments, governance, operations and superannuation…

Andrew Proebstl… ‘I think there’s too much negativity surrounding SMSFs.’ If there’s one super fund that knows a thing or two about mergers, it’s legalsuper, a product of seven mergers inside as many years over the last decade. The chief executive, Andrew Proebstl, has been involved in all of them. He spoke with Greg Bright about…

(Pictured: Daphne van der Oord) S&P Dow Jones Indices (SPDJI) aims to increase its presence in the institutional index space as it builds out its Australian team under the leadership of recent hire Daphne van der Oord. “Given the partnership that we have with the ASX, a big portion of my role will be to ensure…

(Pictured: Bernard Reilly) Bernard Reilly has left State Street Global Advisors, where he was most recently global head of strategy and an executive vice president, after 24 years with the firm, the last nine of which were internationally focused. He decided, he said last week, that, with two teenage boys, he wanted to spend most of…

(Pictured: Andrew Boal) Independence of trustee board directors and how to deal with members’ longevity risk are two of the biggest concerns of superannuation funds, according to Towers Watson Australia managing director, Andrew Boal. To deal with the first, Boal recently released a paper that concluded there isn’t enough to support the compulsory appointment of independent…

(Pictured: Ian Macoun) Boutique incubator Pinnacle Investments is continuing to look for outstanding asset managers and is willing to kiss as many frogs as it takes to find the next “Pinnacle prince or princess”, according to chairman and managing director Ian Macoun. “We haven’t started any new boutique managers in Pinnacle since we partnered with the…

(Pictured: Maria Wilton) Expectations of rising interest rates are not traditionally seen as conducive to strong bond performance, but that hasn’t stopped at least two local fund managers announcing they will enter this space over the past month. And investors shouldn’t believe all market hype when it comes to fixed income and interest rates anyway, according…

(Pictured: Cathy Binnington) by Penny Pryor. A cross-industry working group on indigenous issues in superannuation is putting together a discussion paper that will address some of the inequities of the system that effect indigenous Australians. The working group also hopes to develop a set of guidelines that will help deal with the systemic disadvantages that the…