News

Mercer Super Trust’s merger with Westpac’s superannuation assets will prepare the retail fund for a new era of competition in Australia’s rapidly consolidating super sector. BT’s Personal and Corporate superannuation funds will be merged into the Mercer Super Trust in a successor fund transfer that will create a superannuation fund with $65 billion under management…

Your Future, Your Super (YFYS) is creating a two-speed system in unlisted property where the biggest funds are forced offshore and the smallest must play in their own backyard. That might soon change. It’s a testament to the idiosyncrasies of the YFYS performance test that super funds are still trying to figure out the best…

Investors are now fretting a recession to go along with a more volatile geopolitical outlook. But on that prospect, it’s the cooler-headed fundies that will prevail. One thing that’s obvious from the last few weeks of market movements is that fear is running things again. Inflation and rate rises have given way to talk of…

Custody competition in Australia is heating up as super funds disappear in a flurry of merger activity. But with the RBC transaction catapulting it up the ACSA tables, Citi says it’s ready to take on all comers. “If you’re not able to keep up, you slide into irrelevance,” says Okan Pekin, global head of securities…

Martin Carpenter’s “fantastic career” as Citi’s local head of securities services will draw to a close later this year. He’s got no set destination in mind, but there’s still plenty of travel on the cards. Carpenter’s 13-year stint as the head of Citi Securities Services for Australasia will conclude in the third quarter of 2022….

As Paradice’s emerging market equities strategy hits its three-year anniversary, the outlook for the asset class has never been more uncertain. But the local institutional appetite is voracious. From Covid to Common Prosperity, emerging markets have been roiled by upheaval in the last two years. And Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sent global markets into the…

The NZ Superannuation Fund (NZS) has confirmed a trio of senior appointments, luring two overseas candidates to assume the plum positions. In an update last week, the NZS named Kathryn Kerner, Kevin Wong and Rachael Le Mesurier as respective head of data analytics, senior investment strategist and head of diversity, equity and inclusion. Both Kerner…

Value investors have staged their long-prophesied comeback during the highly volatile start to the year. But questions remain about whether this performance will be prolonged. March stands out as being one of the most difficult periods for investors in a generation. On the one hand, bond markets sent fixed income to its worst return in…

BlackRock has flagged an ESG-lite agenda ahead of the 2022 corporate proxy-voting season. In a note published last week, the BlackRock Investment Stewardship (BIS) group says the US$10 trillion manager – the world’s largest – will direct its considerable proxy power in favour of fewer shareholder proposals this year as companies face votes on more…

Investment management still trends “pale, male, and stale”. But a new mentoring program is aiming to close the female participation gap. It took the Global Financial Crisis for Ming Long AM, now the chair of AMP Capital funds management, to get the CFO role at Investa Property Group. The company had just been taken over…

As big super pursues an engagement-focused approach to sustainability, the challenge will be making its real-world impacts felt by both members and executives. Ask a dozen investment professionals what the key challenge for sustainability is and you’ll get a dozen answers: tracking error considerations borne out of Your Future, Your Super (YFYS); the need to…

With the advent of the Retirement Income Covenant (RIC), super funds can finally move forward on the decumulation phase. But they shouldn’t try to “boil the sea.” Despite the fact that a generation of superannuants are about to enter the decumulation phase, funds are still grappling with the challenge of producing a compelling retirement solution….