News

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…

by David Chaplin Up to a quarter of all asset management firms could be losing money by 2028, a new study by specialist global consultancy firm, Casey Quirk, has found. And that’s if markets continue to rise and fee compression is static. According to the Casey Quirk report, while fund managers have been shielded by…

Market conditions and changing investor preferences are creating new challenges for hedge fund managers’ capital raising ambitions, allowing alternatives funds to gain favour with investors, according to EY’s annual alternative funds survey, ‘Global Alternative Fund Survey – At the Tipping Point: Disruption’. The 12th annual survey (formerly the EY Global Hedge Fund Survey) found that 20…

by Greg Bright Asset consultants hate this, but members love it. It’s when single-industry funds invest back in their own industries. Cbus has been doing it, famously, for years in property, as has Media Super, less famously, in film and TV production. Media Super has now passed $200 million in film and TV investments. This…

Australia looks like being at or near the top of the charts for long-term performance for both equities and bonds, according to work by Research Affiliates. Rob Arnott, the firm’s founder, told seminars in Sydney and Melbourne last week that most mainstream asset classes in most developed countries, however, offered less than investors expected. Australia…

Wells Fargo Asset Management, the San Francisco-based fund manager, has been growing its international business at a fair clip of late. Non-US-sourced funds under management have reached US$36 billion, or about 8 per cent of the total, after a 22 per cent annual growth rate in what are generally seen as difficult times. According to…

UK-based fund manager Octopus Group has quietly built a presence in Australia over the past 12 months and is raising an initial $150 million in capital for one of the firm’s arms, a renewable energy business. To start, it will focus on solar power in Australia. Initially, at least, the solar sites, for which there…