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(Pictured: Yasser El-Ansary) After some years of improvement, Australia’s previously abysmal record of investing in innovation, is again looming, venture capitalists fear. They are concerned that the new Government’s belt tightening may threaten the next round of funding for the Innovation Investment Fund (IIF) and the Translational Biotech Fund (TBF). The Australian Private Equity and Venture…

(Pictured: Craig Mercer) Towers Watson has confirmed its new hedge funds and alternatives consultant, to join the Sydney office from the UK, as one of five recent hires in Australia. He is Craig Mercer, who has most recently headed up the London office of Dalton Investments LLC. Prior to the recent role at Dalton Investments, Mercer…

(Pictured: Connie Mckeage) OneVue is having a busy year. The privately held company has completed a pre-IPO raising with two cornerstone investors and restructured its management following its purchase of the Computershare retail fund registry business. It announced a new senior hire from IOOF last Friday. OneVue has merged its strategy, sales and service teams which…

(Pictured: Joanna Davison) A survey of about 6,000 members of 30 big super funds – and 50 employers from 11 of those funds – has found an increased, and continued positive, level of engagement. The survey, the sixth annual undertaking, is a joint initiative of the Fund Executives Association Ltd (FEAL), the Melbourne Business School and…

Vanguard Asia Pacific has seconded a senior investment analyst from the US, Jeffrey Johnson, to oversee its investment strategy and research team based in Melbourne. He will have a team of four analysts and economists. The team’s revamp is designed to promote and enhance Vanguard’s reputation for thought leadership in investment-related issues and as a…

David Gallagher … ‘what we are doing has a lot of public benefit’ The Centre for International Finance and Regulation (CIFR), based in Sydney, was established as a result of a decision by the first Rudd Government, emanating from the Johnson report into Australia’s financial services industry and its interaction with the region. David Gallagher…

(Pictured:Patrick Liddy) In 1915, for 10 months the ice-moored ship ‘Endurance’ drifted northwest before it was finally crushed. But for Ernest Shackleton and his crew of twenty-seven men the real ordeal had just begun. It was to go on for a further 10 months, in the most unforgiving of terrains, the Antarctic. Shackleton would bring them…

A massive pipeline of securities servicing reviews has developed which will make this year the most significant for changes in more than 10 years. Coupled with the reviews are reductions in prices which question the sustainability of services to super funds and managers. Custody and securities servicing reviews are known to be underway for: TWU…

(Pictured:Raymond Harbert)  Super funds and other investors interested in going down the benchmark-unaware path could do worse than study family offices and fund managers which have developed from private fortunes. Harbert Management Corporation, from Birmingham, Alabama, presents an interesting case study. Harbert, which started in the 1980s with a grab-bag of investments designed to diversify…

(Pictured:Wayne Bowers) Northern Trust Global Investments has not had a lot of exposure to Australia, unlike its securities services sister company. But interest in the firm recently increased following its being awarded four mandates by New Zealand Superannuation Fund. Wayne Bowers, Northern Trust’s international (non-US) CIO, says that international growth has been a focus over…