Following a significant technology and systems uplift, Rest feels it’s ready to do global equities in-house. That doesn’t necessarily mean its roster of external managers will lose out.
From little things big things grow, and the $75 billion industry fund hopes the impact investment commitments it and other funds have made will expand beyond their initial targets in the same way renewables did.
The outgoing chair of Australia’s sovereign wealth fund has come out swinging against “self-styled experts” with “foolhardy schemes” to spend the $200 billion it manages, warning that winding up the Future Fund will leave the government – and future generations of Australians – worse off.
For the last decade, equities (repackaged and otherwise) have reigned supreme. But in a market where everything might soon start to break, investors have to be more nimble.
The “well-intentioned and genuine” claims super funds made about their sustainable bona fides have landed them in the regulators’ crosshairs. They’re going to have to figure out how to actually follow through on them if they want to win the battle for members’ retirement savings.
The $75 billion industry fund is creating an “active, fundamental stock-picking” internal global equity capability and has lined up a former Comgest portfolio manager to oversee it.
Australian Retirement Trust (ART) is getting bigger and more complex. To make sure that doesn’t turn into a big, complex problem, the fund has found itself a new head of investment resilience and is thinking hard about what’s really driving returns in a post-Covid world.
The growing scale of the carbon credit market – and the fact that the next stage of emissions abatement isn’t going to be as simple as the last – means that more institutional attention is warranted, according to Apostle. Just watch out for the volatility.
If or when there’s another royal commission into financial services, the profit-to-member and industry funds will not be able to say they weren’t warned about their problems. They were warned twice on Tuesday alone.
Markets could be asked to absorb a lot more debt as central banks lighten their balance sheets. But as governments continue to issue it, nobody knows whether unwinding can be done in an orderly manner.
