News

Sally Loane The Financial Services Council, which represents the big insurers as well as fund managers, has made a submission to Treasury for reforms to allow insurers to play a greater role in rehabilitation and therapies for workers suffering mental illness. While the submission is confiential, it discusses the problems to do with exclusions for…

by Trevor Dixon* With the final steps towards the mandating of independent trustees for super funds being spelt out, they should now be making the most of the opportunity to benefit from a more diverse pool of trustees. Lessons learnt in the effective governance of corporations, including trustees trying to avoid the middle-aged-white-male syndrome, should…

Having made its way from the backoffice and, increasingly, through the middle office, the outsourcing phenomenon is starting to take hold in the front office. Due to a combination of new regulations and increasing complexity in trading, outsourced dealing services are beginning to replace many inhouse capabilities. According to Philippe Boulenguiez, global head of dealing…

The New Zealand Superannuation Fund has sparked up its dormant internal local equities passive mandate under a revised investment policy published at the end of August. The mandate now sits beside about NZ$600 million in active NZ shares. In 2013, NZ Super switched to running its-then approximately NZ$300 million inhouse local shares portfolio from passive…

 David Shein Tech entrepreneur David Shein believes a firm’s culture and commitment to customer satisfaction are the biggest determinants of its sustained success. And he has one billion reasons to back up his views. Shein, who is to speak at the SuperRatings and Lonsec Day of Confrontation conference at Sydney’s Four Seasons Hotel on October…

Lisa Claes Women have different investment wants and needs than men, make their choices differently and, increasingly, are the more important influencer of choice in the household. But the industry is failing them. Super products such as fee holidays when there are no contributions – during child bearing and rearing – could be very attractive….

Caroline Goodman  Institutional Protection Services (IPS), an international shareholder class actions specialist, has expanded its reach in the region with the appointment of an Australian representative and the completion of its first roadshow. Caroline Goodman, London-based IPS founder and managing director, spent last week in Sydney and Melbourne speaking to super funds and fund manager…

Ken Kencel  Lending to medium-to-large corporates has taken on a different hue in recent years. Pension funds, generally through their fund managers, are now the most important group of lenders ahead of the major banks, especially in the US. The restructuring of GE Capital and its parent in April this year confirmed the permanence of…

Michael Hunstad  With the help of a cute new name – ‘smart beta’ – engineering portfolios to systematically invest according to various factors has captured the attention of investors, both large and small, in the past few years. Now, that attention is getting seriously analytical, according to one of the big providers in the field,…

John Donovan  The Myer family office is to seed an Australian-domiciled fund to be managed by the Ranger Capital Group in the US – the Ranger Global Income and Growth Fund – which has been introduced to the market by distributor AFM Investment Partners. John Donovan, a principal of AFM, said the Ranger strategy had…

Peter Brook  Pillar Administration has selected Financial Synergy to consolidate its nine platforms into one by March next year when the $60 billion First State Super is scheduled to migrate to the new system. Financial Synergy’s Acurity, which was already one of the Pillar platforms, will eventual be administering about 4 million accounts when the…

Kerry Series  Eight Investment Partners (8IP) has doubled the size of its Australian small-cap funds with the confirmation last week of a $55 million mandate from Colonial First State – the firm’s first institutional investor. 8IP was established in 2009 by Kerry Series, a co-founder of Perennial Investment Partners and former head of Asia Pacific…