News

Marion Leslie After 20 years in the data business, Marion Leslie of Thomson Reuters says that the big change in recent times is that costs associated with data collection and management are now being turned into an asset. Thank you ‘big data’. Leslie, the managing director of Thomson Reuters’ global pricing and reference services business,…

Connie Mckeage OneVue Holdings has announced that it is moving on the third part of the super industry in which it does not already have a foothold – industry funds – with its digital SMSF offering. Fundamental changes are happening faster than most of us think, according to Connie Mckeage. Mckeage, the chief executive of…

by Nicholas Way For the more-than 1,000 delegates to the 28th AVCJ Private Equity and Venture forum in Hong Kong, the fact that the benchmark Shanghai index closed last Thursday at a record 10-week high – up 20 per cent since its late August low – must have been seen as a vote of confidence…

Andrew Bloore Most of the disruption occurring in funds management has to do with the SMSF market. But this has a potentially massive knock-on impact for industry and retail super funds. Incumbent systems providers and administrators are not standing idly by. AMP has cemented its number one position as an administrator in the SMSF market…

Paul Gregory New Zealand Super Fund (NZS) head of portfolio intelligence, Paul Gregory, has resigned to take up the last remaining top executive spot at the recently-restructured financial regulator, the Financial Markets Authority (FMA). After a six-year career at NZS, Gregory, a former journalist, will commence as director of external communications and investor resources for…

Mathew Kuppe by Greg Bright Long before the word ‘fintech’ entered the popular vernacular, a small group of young traders and technologists, including Australian Mathew Kuppe, started a multi-bank FX matching system in Germany. They now have the backing of the big German exchange, Deutsche Boerse, and 725 million reasons to smile. The purchase of…

by Francesca D’Arcy* “The whole Silicon Valley motto for startups is ‘move fast, break things’ and ‘get shit done’, that is the biggest thing I’ve learned that Australia isn’t doing,” said Tommi Sullivan, a PhD student at Griffith University. Tommi, who is studying wireless technologies, was part of a group of 20 budding tech entrepreneurs…

Ken Froot Asia looks like it’s turned the corner for investor confidence, heading into positive territory last month for the first time since the start of the Chinese sharemarket meltdown mid-year. But the level of investor confidence in North America has nudged down. The monthly State Street Investor Confidence Index for October, the most influential…

Stephen Mackley  Big things are happening in the super fund administration market. AAS seems to have successfully integrated Superpartners, smaller admin systems companies are doing well and SMSF providers are proliferating. But, by all accounts, the ATO is struggling with SuperStream. For years the quiet infrastructure provider in the super system, administration, has become a…

Dozens of New Zealand financial services roles are heading across the Tasman to Australia following the closure of two global bank-owned NZ operations in the space of a fortnight. In total almost 50 NZ jobs were at threat after Deutsche Bank shut its NZ arm last week, barely days after Goldman Sachs announced it would…

Sai Devabhaktuni Corporate credit markets are suffering a lot of dislocation and, therefore, offering many opportunities, especially in the US and Europe. A confluence of factors is presenting a favourable environment for opportunistic distressed debt, according to PIMCO’s Sai Devabhaktuni. Devabhaktuni, a PIMCO executive vice president and head of distressed corporate debt portfolio management at…

Aaron Jenkins PIMCO has picked up NZ$120 million (A$114 million) in seed money as manager for the soon-to-be-launched Smartshares new global fixed income exchange-traded funds (ETFs). According to offer documents for the Smartshares Global Bond Trust, the NZX-owned ETF operator would tip in “an initial deposit of $120 million in cash” to fire up the…