News

by Patrick Liddy* My old man was an immigrant from Ireland. His official name was ‘James Liddy’, but he was called ‘Seamus’. In Northern Ireland when he was born it was illegal to christen your child with a Gaelic first name. Can you imagine? I named my son, my first born, after him. He’s officially…

The world’s largest active-only fund manager visited last week last week. Andy Budden, Singapore-based investment director with the Capital Group, said the philosophy behind the US$1.8 trillion asset manager’s flagship global equities fund remained as relevant today as it did on its launch 45 years ago. A frequent visitor to Australia and New Zealand, Budden…

The world’s biggest and most famous, or infamous, private equity firm has revisited its opinions on the macro environment just two months after already delivering its original views, in January. The verdict is: it’s OK. Thanks for the insight. The KKR white paper published recently by Henry McVey, the firm’s head of global macro and…

Has the factor magic disappeared? New research by index provider FTSE Russell suggests the answer to that question lies in the eye of the beholder. A just-published FTSE Russell paper says recent reports of the death of factors may be premature. Factor, or ‘smart beta’, investing targets a number of allegedly persistent characteristics buried in…

by Greg Bright If there was likely to be any triumphalism expressed at last week’s CMSF, post Royal Commission and with the flood of money leaving bank-owned commercial super funds in favour of profit-for-member funds, Ian Silk put paid to it in the opening plenary session. There is no room for complacency. Silk, the chief…

The AIST has 55 profit-for-member fund members. There are another 142 APRA-regulated large funds, 117 of which are for-profit commercial funds. A majority of the total of 194 APRA-regulated large funds has already outsourced most or all of its investments and many have outsourced other administrative or even trustee-type functions. APRA in late 2017 identified…

Australian fund managers have historically viewed New Zealand as an easy-sell; just another state to be serviced by fly-in, fly-out (FIFO) BDMs. But the Kiwis can be a prickly lot. They frequently prefer to deal with offshore managers who commit some boots on the ground or at least those that attempt to meet the locals…

You’d have to say the global private equity market is going gangbusters. Whether or not that’s good for investors is a different question, of course. But when a fund administrator, such as Mainstream Fund Services, has its say, it tends to provide an extra degree of authenticity to the discussion. At the latest in its…

After what has been the most anticipated company reporting season for several years, the verdict is that the market has been a bit too pessimistic. The results are, by and large, not too bad. More ASX-listed companies reported results beat broker consensus forecasts for sales than didn’t, and while there have been more misses for…

by David Chaplin The name remains the same: AMP NZ gets to keep its brand after its Australian parent abandoned a well-flagged IPO last week. And Commonwealth Bank similarly shelved its IPO plan. Q: Who wants to buy an institutionally owned financial planning business? A: no-one. For AMP, the surprise rebranding of the NZ wealth…

State Street and its recently acquired systems and data subsidiary, Charles River Development, have entered into a co-operative arrangement with the risk management specialist and research firm Axioma, whereby the three will integrate their analytics, allowing them, collectively, to cover most or all front, middle and backoffice tasks. The deal is seen, potentially at least,…

Future IM/Pact, an industry-supported group which looks to increase gender and other aspects of diversity within funds management, has signed two new partners ahead of its first major student networking events for 2019, which are happening in Sydney and Melbourne this week. The two new supporters are Challenger and Macquarie Securities which have joined the…