MMC, the Auckland-based administration and consulting firm, has acquired about half of the equity in Brisbane-based super fund administrator IFAA. MMC says it is a “passive” investment and that future technological synergies will flow both ways across the Tasman. IFAA is well known in the Australian super industry for its bespoke personal service for members,…
by Greg Bright Venture capital used to be the “red-headed step child” of the investment industry, an annual private equity and venture industry conference was told last week. Sheridan Lee, a long-time third-party marketer for both mainstream and alternative managers, said the times had changed. Super funds were coming on board with venture. “Ten years…
Mavis would have been proud of Jane Caro, the writer and documentary maker, last week, when she delivered stirring speeches at the annual ‘Mavis Robertson International Women’s Day’ events held by Women in Super. Caro managed to make even the men present both laugh out loud and sigh with despair. It was a masterful performance….
EAM Investors, a San Diego-based global small and micro-cap specialist manager, is looking to capitalise on the “innovation, disruption and re-invention” happening in the corporate world, especially in the small-cap space. “We’re looking for change in a company at the margin,” according to Travis Prentice. On a visit to Australia last week, the chief executive…
Scottish Widows has created a specialist responsible investment team to monitor sustainable activity across its range of funds. Unlike Australian and New Zealand funds, which tend to integrate ESG functions into their overall investment processes, UK funds more often outsource the delivery of their specialist ethical options. The Lloyds-owned Stg150 billion (A$252 billion) fund manager…
Despite the best intentions of divestment advocates, fossil fuels are unlikely to vanish from the global energy mix any time soon, according to a recent AMP Capital paper. In fact, both fossil fuel use and the global output of carbon dioxide look set to increase over the coming decades as population growth and ascendant emerging…
Fidelity International took out the major ‘fund manager of the year’ award at Morningstar’s annual event last Friday evening (February 28). Nearly 200 people, many of them advisors, also heard Jamie Wickham’s upbeat view on the advice industry. Wickham, the managing director of Morningstar for Australia and New Zealand, said, while introducing the proceedings, that…
Rupal Bhansali, the CIO of Chicago-based global equities firm Ariel Investments, has just published a book, ‘Non-Consensus Investing: Being Right When Everyone Else is Wrong’. Sadly, one of the wrong things we do is not having sufficient gender diversity at either board or senior management level. The book is edifying. Rupal is a relatively frequent…
CLOs are making a come-back, having received a largely undeserved bad rap through the global financial crisis. An under-appreciated fact is that they, on average, didn’t lose any money in the crisis. They came back to par. They are now shining in a low-yield environment. CLOs (collateralised loan obligations) make up nearly all of the…
Private credit markets represent a hot asset class for big investors at the moment. But they are more diverse, more heterogenous and more geographically different than you’d think. bfinance, the global institutional search firm, says the asset sub-class is attracting a lot of new interest in Australia and New Zealand. UK-based Trevor Castledine, a senior…
