News

Andrew Roberts, the billionaire former major shareholder in the Multiplex property group, appears to be retiring parts of his interest in funds management. RF Capital has shuttered its hedge fund strategy, known as the Empirica business, resulting in a dozen positions being made redundant.. RF Capital, the Roberts family funds management firm, had been on…

Mine Super, the $11 billion coal industry fund formerly known as AusCoal, announced late last Friday the resignation of David Bell, the fund’s CIO. It came as a shock. He is remaining at the fund, though, until a replacement is found. The statement from Mine Super, at 4.45pm last Friday, said: “David has been employed…

Parametric, the specialist implementation manager, has been awarded a $200 million global equities mandate by a big super fund. The bespoke mandate, which is worthy of a case study, addresses certain risk factors and concerns about unintended biases in factor-based portfolios. Unfortunately, the fund’s executives have requested anonymity. It is the manager’s first factor mandate…

Manager search specialist bfinance has ticked over 70 searches for pension fund clients in the Asia Pacific region, 30 of which were in Australia, where it set up office in 2016. The trend with those mandates is instructive – funds are going defensive and alternative. According to Pal Sarai, a London-based managing director and head…

Rather scarily, Chris Mittleman, the managing partner and CIO of US-based global equities shop Mittleman Investment Management, which has beaten its benchmark by a wide margin since the firm’s inception, says the opportunity set for his value style reminds him of 1999. “We are at zero cash now in our fund. Our average has been…

With the ubiquity of MySuper default options, many funds have attempted to provide a more tailored retirement solution to members through the adoption of so-called ‘lifecycle’ strategies. But, a new paper by Frontier Advisors, warns that members may retire with less as a result. The paper, co-authored by David Carruthers, a principal consultant and head…

ANZ head of wealth products, Ana-Marie Lockyer, is to leave the bank’s New Zealand business by Christmas. It is understood, Lockyer, whose product duties include the country’s largest pool of KiwiSaver funds, is departing following a group restructure triggered by the sale of ANZ’s life insurance business. This May, US insurance giant Cigna purchased the…

The ASX has delivered on its promise from a few years ago to build an “investor supermarket” covering not only listed companies but a range of other strategies and opportunities from professional managers. The ETF market, coupled with the expansion of listed investment companies and listed investment trusts, has been its shining glory. To its…

Big super funds have an average allocation to the retailing industry, mainly through bricks-and-mortar property, of about 4 per cent, according to calculations by Adrian Benedict. While he didn’t actually say this, the sub-text from a presentation in Sydney last week was: get out now. Benedict is the investment director, real estate, for Fidelity International,…

State Street Global Advisors is releasing two interesting papers this week on the outlook for global bonds and currencies. The common theme is: the past is behind us and the future will be different. Here is the firm’s advice for investors of all shapes and sizes in an increasingly difficult environment. Bonds and currencies tend…

CFM, the Paris-based global quant manager which has established a beachhead in Australia with its liquid alternatives beta strategies, opened a shiny new office in Sydney last week, with lots of room for growth. Liquid alts, as they are known, representing CFM’s core offering, are gaining traction. Philippe Jordan, who joined the firm in 2006…

It is often said that momentum, as an investment style, adds value on average over time. And the stats say that is true. In fact, compared with other styles, such as value – the grand-daddy of all styles – it works right up until the time it doesn’t work. Here’s how quants use it. According…