Opening up early access to super for housing would have a negative effect on the balances of even those members that don’t dig into their savings, with funds forced to adopt more conservative investment strategies and hold more liquid assets.
The circa $88 billion industry fund for workers in health and community services reckons that alleviating the affordable housing crisis will boost its other investments by easing the cost of living and inflation.
Carruthers departs Mercer after resourcing review
(Pictured: David Carruthers)
David Carruthers, a Mercer principal who is well known for his involvement in establishing the Global Investment Management Database and more recently in other information products, has been made redundant after 19 years with the firm.
Carruthers worked on GIMD, which became the dominant manager performance database in the world, with team leader Stephen Jackman, who now heads up the PwC investment consulting unit in Melbourne. Jackman left Mercer at the end of 2013. He was sent to the US in 1998 to initiate the database project.
Carruthers said last week that he was currently enjoying his time off and would be looking to get back into the workforce soon. He joined Mercer in the UK as a consultant before moving into the development of research tools for clients out of the Melbourne office.
Most recently he had been working on the Mercer Insight product, which helps manager selection, for big institutional clients and a similar version for the wealth management part of Mercer.
Simon Eagleton, the senior partner of Mercer Investments in Australia, said there were no immediate plans to replace Carruthers. He said that Carruthers had been involved in various IT projects recently, some of which were completed.
“His departure resulted from a global review of resourcing where his ongoing responsibilities have been absorbed by others,” he said.
Clare Armstrong, one of the senior manager researchers in Melbourne, is the new point of contact for clients of the Mercer information surveys and products.
