(Pictured: Damian Moloney) Frontier Advisors, Australia’s second-largest asset consultant, has added the UK and Europe to its research alliance base, complementing a deal with Segal Rogers Casey for North America last year. Alliances with research firms covering South America, Asia, the Middle East and Africa, are in the wings. Frontier and Rogers Casey last year…
 (Pictured: Simon Shields) One of the various consequences of the GFC for super funds and other investors is the greater freedom they are now prepared to offer their managers. It is a bit like – but not exactly – a return to the balanced fund era of the 1980s. A new boutique which emerged in…
(Pictured: Marco Colantonio) Resolution Capital is celebrating its 10th anniversary as an independent listed property funds manager. The Australian company, which now performs on the global stage, has had an interesting history. It seems likely, also, to have an interesting future. This is the brief history: The business which became Resolution Capital (RCL) started as…
AustralianSuper has made its first investment in the UK shopping centre market, through its expanding internal investment team and via a co-investment with the BT (British Telecom) Pension Scheme. The deal marks the first property investment by the AustralianSuper inhouse managers. The deal was organized by Hermes Real Estate Investment Management, which sold its investment…
(Pictured: Paul Coenraads) Paul Coenraads, former head of investments at AUSCOAL Super, has taken up a new role running investment operations at Australian Catholic Super in Sydney. He started there this month. AUSCOAL announced last August that it was restructuring its small investment team, with the proposed appointment of its first chief investment officer, who…
NAB Asset Servicing has upped its sales effort with the appointment of long-time NAB executive Peter Hele to the new role of head of business development, Australia/New Zealand. The announcement, last week, signals an increased effort in New Zealand, especially, where BNP Paribas has a dominant position in terms of numbers of clients, and in…
(Pictured: Spiro Paule) Centric Wealth and Financial Index Wealth Accountants will merge, assuming last week’s announced proposed agreed takeover proceeds, to become one of Australia’s largest, and unaligned, advisory groups, speaking for $7.6 billion under advice. This may have implications for the institutional part of the industry too. Financial Index’s (Findex) backer, private equity firm…
Planners will have to offer this advice, one way or another, if they are going to keep their client base. But it’s not for everybody. It’s a touchy feely subject.’ – Anna Lawton The complicated world of aged care is about to get a bit more complicated with this year’s proposed changes to the core…
Comment by Greg Bright It was controversial when APRA announced a few years back that it would be publishing its own performance tables for super funds, using collected data dating back to 2004. Commercial researchers who had been doing this for a while – Rainmaker, SuperRatings and ChantWest – were concerned. They needn’t have been….
Pictured: Chris Ailman UNPRI, which came under fire late last year for its own governance, has strengthened its board with the addition of Chris Ailman, the CIO of America’s second-largest pension fund, CalSTRS. Ailman said in a statement last week that CalSTRS, which has assets of about US$180 billion, had been adopting ESG (environment, social…
