An academic report into the investment management of Australian general and life insurance companies’ statutory and regulatory funds shows a stable environment over the past three years, with capital or risk management requirements likely to be the major driver of any future asset allocation shifts. The report includes a survey of 14 life and general…
Australian investors, on average, have lost money from currency in their international portfolios over the 40-year period to 2012, according to global currency manager Adrian Lee & Partners. But at least the manager is not predicting a further fall in the $A against the US$ for the remainder of this year. The firm’s London-based founder,…
James Gruver has left BNY Mellon, where he was most recently managing director and head of the client advisory group in the US, to join alternatives specialist Black River Asset Management to help expand the firm’s international reach. Gruver joins the Minneapolis-based Black River as head of investor relations, reporting to CEO and managing principal…
Brian Slade, Melbourne-based managing director, asset servicing, for BNY Mellon, left the company last week after a 24-year career with the firm and its predecessor. He said he wanted to remain in the industry. Slade established the former Bank of America securities servicing business in Sydney in 1989. Prior to that he was an auditor…
Despite initial reticence from the board about securities lending, the A$40 billion QSuper will shortly begin a lending program. QSuper’s custodian, State Street, is understood to have been awarded the mandate although QSuper head of investment operations, Kyle Ringrose, last week told the ‘Global Investor’ conference in Australia that the fund could not see any…
John Nolan, founder of JANA and former maverick asset consultant, said a few years ago that the lack of insistence on after-tax management among their preferred managers had been an indictment on his own earlier profession. To his credit, Nolan made up for it when he devoted himself to funds management at Warakirri Asset Management,…
Christopher Gunns, a former marketing head at Neuberger & Berman and ING Investment Management in Hong Kong as well as Australia, has been appointed to a new role at the Chinese-owned China Universal Asset Management in Shanghai. The role involves building the international business in the QFII and QDII space for China Universal, where most…
Profile by Patrick Liddy “For scientific leadership give me Scott; for swift and efficient travel, Amundsen; but when you are in a hopeless situation, when there seems no way out, get down on your knees and pray for Shackleton”. Ernest Shackleton was a polar explorer, who along with his twenty seven men, survived for over…
The latest APRA superannuation figures, which show a rare decline in employer contributions, pose some interesting questions as to what’s happening among well-heeled private investors in Australia. James Bond, chief economist at the Financial Services Council, has some possible explanations. The APRA figures for the March quarter show a 22 per cent increase in voluntary…
Russell Investments has launched an Australian institutional fund aimed at the growing “outcome-orientated” investment market, investing across a broad range of asset classes and sub-classes in a benchmark-unaware fashion. A similar fund has been run in the UK for just over three years. Andrew Sneddon, a managing director and portfolio manager, told the Russell annual…
