Our Authors

(Pictured: Bo Knudsen) As one of the world’s first global managers to offer a concentrated portfolio as its core flagship product, Carnegie Asset Management thinks a lot about portfolio construction. It has had to. The 24-year-old fund, which makes up 75 per cent of the manager’s assets, has always had a maximum of 30 stocks. Many…

(Pictured: Rob da Silva) The tone was a little downbeat at the annual van Eyk Research conference in Sydney last week, with key speakers focusing on the various risks facing the financial world. The conference is historically one of the major influencers of the mood of the retail advice industry. The major themes were similar to…

Investec Bank said Friday that property funds management would remain a core business unit for the group in Australia following the sale of its “professional finance” business to the Bank of Queensland. The professional finance business includes deposits asset finance and leasing. BoQ told the market it would pay $440 million in the deal. Apart…

(Pictured: Martin Harris) Martin Harris, a former senior funds management marketer in Australia, including at Colonial First State and what is now UBS Asset Management, has become global head of institutional business at Jupiter Investment Management in London. The position is a new role for the big UK firm, which has concentrated most of its efforts…

Risk management is deeply ingrained in David Iverson, head of asset allocation at the A$20 billion New Zealand Superannuation Fund. Writing a book about it, however, proved to be more of an act of faith. David Chaplin finds out why. In the beginning there was the statement of investment beliefs. Or there should have been, according…

(Pictured: Paddy Manning) by Greg Bright Australian Ethical Investment has bought the pioneering publication Ethical Investor and will continue its fortnightly newsletter, no doubt as a loss leader. The publication has always been a labour of love. But its story is also reflective of the history of ESG investing in Australia. Ethical Investor was the brainchild…

(Pictured: Martin Scott) A leading indicator of expected investment mandate activity – fund management sales recruitment – has picked up considerably. Here are several key hires to be announced in coming weeks, including the opening of a UK hedge fund firm’s office in Australia. >  Winton Capital, a UK-based hedge fund manager, which has been represented…

(Pictured: Rohan Singh) Northern Trust has picked up three big new asset servicing clients in Australia in the past few weeks, including, most recently, the $14.8 billion investments portfolio of IAG (Insurance Australia Group). While neither IAG nor Northern’s head of Australian business, Rohan Singh, were able to comment on the mandate last week, they supplied…

(Pictured: Phil Weinberg) We’ve been telling everyone for years but it now turns out that we were right: good execution of securities trading is important. It’s important not only for fund managers but also for super funds who are their clients and, increasingly, their competitors. Phillip Weinberg, the founder of Australia’s first broker-neutral trading firm, has…

(Pictured: John Stopford) There are many changes afoot in investment management and a lot of them are interlinked. The blending of fixed interest and multi-asset strategies is an interesting development, which is prompting pension funds to rethink the way they do asset allocation. After a 35-year bull market, global fixed interest is likely to be a…