A significant chunk of the world’s largest institutional investors are doing what the market tells them and moving faster on asset allocation changes and investment decisions as uncertainty spikes.
It’s picked up hundreds of billions in custody assets from the NAS exit, but BNP Paribas wants to lock them down before it goes hunting for more – with private markets and its offshore presence at the top of the pitch deck.
Australia’s superannuation system hasn’t seen the end of consolidation, according to Mercer, with megafund mergers on the horizon and the number of small funds likely to drop precipitously.
Investing with a manager when they’re winning is usually peak risk, but that’s what a lot of funds do. Meanwhile, passive investing remains “the elephant in the room”, even as it allows for greater freedom to invest in alpha-generating assets and strategies.
In the first half of 2022 the market fell almost as much as it did when Europe tumbled into World War Two. Then it reversed course – and famed bubble spotter Jeremy Grantham says a new artificial intelligence bubble is the cause.
Australia’s biggest super fund has slashed the headcount in its Melbourne-based global equities team as it prepares to build out a new crew in its rapidly expanding London office.
It’s tempting to think of the latest review into Your Future Your Super as just more regulatory tinkering, but experts think there’s a good chance it will give the industry a real solution to the unintended consequences of the performance test.
More and more of the global institutional investor set is turning to thematic strategies even as they resist the use of ESG benchmarks amidst questions about the methodologies that underpin them.
In private debt, you win by not losing, and key to not losing is good manager selection. But with a massive number of “me too” players entering the market, that’s getting harder.
The smart money at the US$10 trillion asset manager is in hedge funds, gold and inflation-linked bonds, while local investors in its exchange-traded products are bargain hunting in China.
