Registrations for the Investment Operations & Custody Conference – World’s Best Practice – taking place in Shanghai, April 29-30, close on April 17. A total of 28 speakers and panelists are confirmed in the latest draft Agenda, available at: www.www.ioandc.com The conference, the first of its kind in the region, follows the new format of…
State Super of NSW, the biggest defined benefit fund in Australia, has upped the pace in building a professional investment team. Following the recruitment of Mark O’Brien, formerly the AMP Capital CIO, last month, the fund has now secured two new senior investment executives and has two more to be announced soon. The $A36 billion…
SuperRatings is looking to emulate its Australian success, including its established annual awards system for funds, with a Hong Kong ratings business for the nascent MPF Employee Choice Arrangement (ECA) pension funds, which came into force last November. MPF Ratings, the Hong Kong subsidiary run by former Australian fund management executive Francis Chung, will hold…
Ron Liling, one of the founders of Intech Financial Services, was offered the investment consulting part of his former business a couple of years after he’d sold it to Skandia. If he’d bought it back, he says, he would have changed it to a strategy consulting firm. “Picking managers is a mug’s game,” Liling said…
Sunsuper has made the decision to follow the likes of the Future Fund and First State Super and divest its holdings in any company producing tobacco products. Tony Lally, chief executive of the $22 billion fund, said the decision to cut their investment was made for a number of reasons and no one reason was…
Having just completed a roadshow marketing its World Bank green bond fund in Australia, and a series of general institutional presentations on the firm’s integration with parent Nikko Asset Management, Tyndall Investment Management is now embarking on a marketing campaign for its Australian investment strategies. The $A23 billion firm, acquired by Nikko in late 2010,…
Former head of All Star Funds, Kate Mulligan, has set up a management consulting firm specializing in funds management – King Irving Consulting Group. Mulligan, who practiced law with Allens and Freehills before getting into the funds management industry with Tyndall Investment Management in 1995, said King Irving (named after her grandfather) would provide both…
The new chief executive officer of AIST, Tom Garcia, is working with all related parties to ensure the right SuperStream frameworks are in place by July 1, 2013, when all super funds need to be compliant (with employers to follow July 1, 2014). “There is a lot of work being done around understanding SuperStream and…
Dimensional Fund Advisors is speaking with a number of super funds about its Managed DC platform that will allow funds to create investment options for individual members rather than maintain the current one-size-fits all. The Managed DC option was designed by Nobel Prize-winning academic Robert Merton – resident scientist at Dimensional and professor of finance…
Bob Geldof, in Australia to spruik his upcoming Boomtown Rats concert but also his private equity fund in Africa – 8 Miles – called on major super funds to choose Africa as their next alternative investment option rather than China. In response to queries about Africa’s transparency Geldof cited the following numbers regarding corruption. “You…
