News

The NSW Trustee and Guardian, which oversees a fiduciary fund of about $3 billion, is understood to have decided on a new securities services provider and custodian following a review by KPMG and a tender process. The fund, which came about through the merger in 2009 of the NSW Public Trustee and the Office of…

by Wietske Blees* Factor investment strategies are on the rise among Australian asset owners, with multi-factor strategies proving particularly attractive. However, while available research shows significant long-term risk/ return benefits, implementation hurdles remain considerable and errors can be costly. Stephen Quance, Asia Pacific director of factor investing at Invesco has noticed a significant uptake in…

For people doing operational due diligence on fund managers and other service providers for institutional investors, the examination of audited financial statements, a crucial part of the process, can be particularly difficult. Here’s a guide from Castle Hall, the global due diligence specialist. In the latest ‘primer’ in its ‘Due Diligence University’ industry education series,…

Both the chair of the former AVCAL, Andrew Major, and chief executive, Yasser El-Ansary, emphasised that the process behind the change of name signalled a new beginning for the organisation. Just as well. The process took 18 months. The new name was announced at the annual dinner last week, held in conjunction with the Australasian…

Institutional investors and their fund managers have been talking about the importance of taking a long-term view for a long time. But other things, such as the performance surveys and peer pressure, tend to get in the way. Now, Edinburgh-based Martin Currie Investments has drawn a line in the sand. Martin Currie’s emerging markets team,…

The dominos have started to fall for Australian-related class actions with the market having become “passive enough” that investors are looking to update their policies to ensure they can partake in the potential gains from legal actions. Two high-profile cases, Crown Resorts and Vocation, have deadlines today (March 4) for investor registration. According to Financial…

We’ve known about it for years, but D-Day is now close at hand for big super funds. An estimated $500 billion is, potentially, going to leave the system over the next two years, according to an APRA estimate. Funds can longer afford to be complacent about their business. David Orford, an actuary who made his…

Heitman LLC, the global real estate investment management firm, has launched the ‘Heitman Global Prime Real Estate Trust’, seeded by an unnamed super fund with A$128.5 million. Equity Trustees has been appointed trustee. Heitman’s ‘global prime strategy’ is a benchmark-unaware, diversified portfolio of publicly traded global real estate securities designed to provide investors exposure to…

WCM Investment Management, which manages global money for two of Contango Asset Management’s listed investment vehicles, puts a lot of store into the importance of analysing the corporate culture of its investee companies. This is not always easy. The manager has been building a footprint in the Australian institutional market for about five years and,…

While disaggregation among financial planning groups commenced before the Royal Commission, it is certainly more top of mind now. But not everyone is keen on going down that route. A group of Perth-based businessmen is looking to raise $3 million in a first round of investment for a financial advice aggregation business, known as Broadleaf…

Nikko Asset Management has excluded a new swag of ‘sin’ sectors from its ‘high conviction’ global equities fund. In a just-released statement of investment policies and objectives (SIPO), Nikko details exclusion rules for the group’s Global Shares Fund covering companies involved in pornography, alcohol, fossil fuels and gambling. The fund, managed by the Edinburgh-based Nikko…

Chinese stock markets received a huge boost last week following the call by index provider MSCI to up its China A shares inclusion factor from the current 5 per cent to 20 per cent by the end of this year. The MSCI move could see up to US$125 billion flow into Chinese shares as funds…