News

John Bennett National Australia Bank is conducting its biennial foreign exchange survey of big super funds and other asset owners with a view to publishing the results in November. The bank, which offers passive hedging strategies for clients, couldn’t have picked a better time. According to John Bennett, NAB’s general manager, Global FI Sales and…

Philippe Jordan Capital Fund Management (CFM) is to launch a diversified alternative beta fund in Australia – the latest liquid alternatives product to hit the market – capitalising on increasing demand for a plethora of smart beta strategies. The Paris-based manager is highly quantitative, boasting a mix of physicists and mathematicians alongside traders at all…

Michael Hanson-Lawson  It’s not just in the general media but also in the investment world: Russia gets a lot of bad press. And, of late, the press couldn’t get much worse. Sanctions are biting the economy and the rouble has plummeted. Meanwhile, Vladamir Putin remains steadfast in his aggressive stance to his neighbours and the…

Mike Rierson Big data may change the way some managers invest. A lot has already been said about the predictive power of data analysis on stock prices – things such as chatter on social media. BlackRock has now applied its “data science” research to fixed income portfolios. BlackRock recently published a research note on the…

Matt Brown  NAB Asset Servicing has been retained by two big super fund clients after reviews of their custody arrangements. NAB has re-won both the $5 billion Maritime Super and the $8 billion MTAA Super in recent weeks. The latest custody reviews come off the back of a frenetic period for custodians which has seen…

Ross Bowden The bringing together under the one roof of Superpartners’ scaled financial advice business and the AAS-owned Money Solutions means that big, mostly not-for-profit, super funds will deliver more than 35,000 individual pieces of advice to members this year, rising to more than 50,000 a year in the medium term. More advice will be…

Daniel Sheard  The hit taken by share markets over the past three weeks following the Chinese market meltdown has underscored the enduring importance of a significant chunk of fixed interest in any portfolio. But, if interest rates are likely to head north again soon, what sort of fixed interest investments are best? The answer, for…

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…