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…
While the West will continue to inch towards recovery, thanks to the US, but with some further setbacks in Europe, and the East will deliver slower growth, the investing world’s economic backdrop is likely to mean much lower beta market returns in the immediate future, according to speakers at the Russell Investments conference in Sydney…
Benjamin Graham is generally considered to be the father of value investing, following his work during the 1930s. He was also the father of quality investing. Quality investing, however, is a little more difficult to describe and is not one of the generally accepted investment styles measured and analyzed by institutional investors. Jamie Nicol, one…
The biggest decision fiduciary investors, especially those in Australia, usually have to make – and cannot not make – is about currency. With the A$ having remained away from fair value for a long time until its recent decline, the currency decision is and should be at the top of investors’ to-do list. In February,…
