Advances in technology used by custodians is helping them to engage directly with members or unit holders on behalf of big funds, providing detailed investment positions, calculations and projections for individuals. JP Morgan’s ‘Audience of One’ program, which has been operating in the US since 2005, has had a positive impact on US pension plan…
As some Chinese banks are looking to expand into regional and then global custodian services – notably Bank of China and ICBC – they now face competition at home from their domestic brokerage firms. The China funds management research house Z-Ben Advisors reports in its client newsletter that China Merchants Securities (CMS) has become the…
Q: Why do we still use cap-weighted indices at all?A: Because that’s the way we measure performance. As old as the now-redundant argument as to whether passive investments are better than active over time is the argument as to whether capitalization-weighted indices, which remain the norm, represent the best yardstick for the average pension fund’s…
State Street, which has a long on-the-ground history in China, including a large administration and software base in Hangzhou, has decided on a traditional partnership structure for its first Chinese domestic asset management business. The firm announced last week that it would take a 49 per cent interest, through State Street Global Advisors, in a…
Notwithstanding a 60 per cent fall from its peak, the Chinese stock market still looks unattractive to a renowned US-based value manager who has been billed as “the new Benjamin Graham”. Vitaliy Katsenelson, the Russian-born CIO of Investment Management Associates Inc, believes the quality of information about Chinese stocks, the high proportion which are linked…
IO&C is hopeful of raising $US40,000 for the Shanghai-based CereCare charity for disabled children in China with a gala dinner at next April’s conference at the Hyatt on the Bund. A proportion of the funds will go to the supply of new wheel chairs and the remainder to contribute to the provision of a special…
The influential Australian Council of Superannuation Investors, representing the country’s largest fiduciary investment funds, has recommended several regulatory reforms and changed market practices for custodians and others involved in proxy voting at meetings for listed companies. This follows a research project by ACSI which studied proxy votes by 23 big investors during 2011, involving 1,895…
While regulators often speak of moving away from prescriptive rules-based regulation towards to a more holistic principles-based system, their actions usually seem the opposite. Take, for example, last week’s announcement increasing financial requirements for custodians operating in Australia. The Australian Securities and Investments Commission published on November 14 a consultation paper on proposed changes for…
The differing concerns, fears and aspirations of institutional investors around the world have been starkly outlined in a landmark study by the State Street Centre for Applied Research. Chinese are more worried about transparency than performance. Australians, who are most concerned about performance, are more worried about their regulators but also distrust their service providers….
eVestment Alliance (eA) has thrown down the gauntlet to Mercer in the institutional performance information and fund ranking markets with the acquisition of two well-known hedge fund information businesses. eA has acquired PerTrac, one of the largest specialist hedge fund information firms, and Fundspire, a cloud-technology hedge fund analytics and performance data and tools provider….
