News

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…

Chris Cuffe  When it all seemed to be getting bogged down in definitional discussions at the inaugural Impact Investing Summit – especially where super funds and other fiduciary investors were concerned – Chris Cuffe rode to the rescue. Cuffe, the chair of UniSuper, philanthropist and former driving force behind the creation of Colonial First State…

Mark Pearce  With interest rates likely to head north and stock markets near fair value or above, coupled with a global shortage of yield investments, what does an advisor tell clients? A group of Australian researchers recently discussed their asset allocation options. On the Rainmaker ‘Best of Breed’ tour to London last month, the big…

Alice Breheny by Alice Breheny* Perhaps the biggest problem for large funds investing in commercial real estate is finding the investments. Certainly that’s the case in Australia and, increasingly, there is only one option: go global. TH Real Estate tells how to go about it. Investors in search of attractive commercial real estate opportunities must…

Kerry Series  Small caps don’t need an extraneous boost to their attractiveness as an investment, according to Kerry Series. But he will happily take the recent extra interest from overseas investors under the new Significant Investor Visa arrangements. Here is the offer for his first LIC. The Government changed the rules, effective July 1, in…

Maddy Senior  In the evolution of securities servicing over the past 30-or-so years three things have proved constant: fees keep going down; services get more and more complex, as do the securities themselves; and, everything gets faster and more automated. In fact, according to Madeleine (Maddy) Senior, the new head of Australia and New Zealand…