News

Drew Wilson Funds manager servicing company Fundhost Ltd has recruited Drew Wilson back to the firm as joint chief executive, alongside founder Anne Ridgway. He had previously spent about three years with Fundhost as a business development manager. Wilson, an experienced marketer, who came to Australia from Canada with Toronto Dominion Bank in 2000, said…

Anne-Maree O’Connor A new corporate governance alliance between New Zealand’s largest institutional investors was launched last week with 16 member organisations, representing about 15 per cent of the NZ share market. The Corporate Governance Forum (CGF) is being chaired by Anne-Maree O’Connor, who is head of responsible investment for the NZ Super Fund. CGF currently…

Simon Cox   “Our scenario is ambitious but I don’t think it’s crazy,” says Simon Cox, the investment strategist for BNY Mellon Investment Management in Asia Pacific. He made an interesting case for global optimism, last week, in a series of presentations for advisors. “We thought it was at least worth exploring more optimistic scenarios for…

Rupal Bhansali  Just as all good things must come to an end, so, all bad things must too. But the trick to contrarian investing, according to a leading proponent on the global stage, Rupal Bhansali, is not to try to catch all falling knives. The CIO of Ariel Investments likes a neat turn of phrase….

Mark Warminger New Zealand’s financial regulator has launched civil proceedings against Milford Asset Management (MAM) portfolio manager, Mark Warminger, on alleged market manipulation charges. In a statement issued last week, the Financial Markets Authority said it would be seeking “pecuniary penalties” from Warminger in relation to trading carried out at Milford between December 2013 and…

by Greg Bright  UBS Wealth-spawned Crestone group, which starts life on October 1 with more than $20 billion under advice, will use the Avaloq platform developed for Deutsche Private Wealth rather than that of FNZ, which has had an alliance with UBS Investment Bank for big super funds. UBS Wealth initiated a review of its…

Willie Watt Martin Currie is looking to boost its institutional presence in Australia with a new push in the retirement incomes space by the former Legg Mason Australia ‘equity income’ fund and the establishment of a locally domiciled unit trust for a new global low-volatility-style fund. Willie Watt, the Edinburgh-based global chief executive of Martin…

Justin White The importance of new products and investment strategies for fund manager inflows has jumped to record levels in the past two years, according to a white paper by Casey, Quirk & Associates. But the product development track record of most managers is “mediocre”. New active strategies are getting most of the inflows. Casey,…

Nicolas Le Clech  Super funds say that the increasing complexity of risk analysis and management is their biggest concern in the current market and regulatory environment. But whether they have the tools at hand to address their concerns is another story, according to the recent round of Fund Executives Association Ltd member lunches. Nicolas Le…

David Reckenberg UniSuper lawyer David Reckenberg has returned to private practice after about 13 years in funds management. He has joined the recently established financial services unit of innovative Melbourne firm Hive Legal where he links with several other former lawyers from Minter Ellison. Reckenberg said last week that he was strongly attracted to Hive…

Bryan Gray JP Morgan has won the unified custody and securities servicing role at the NZ$30 billion-plus Accident Compensation Commission of New Zealand fund, knocking Northern Trust out of a job in the process. According to an ACC spokesperson, the transition of Northern Trust-held assets to JP Morgan – amounting to about NZ$5 billion of…

Madeleine Senior Two of the largest securities servicing firms in the region, JP Morgan and Northern Trust, have new heads of their Australian and New Zealand businesses following reshuffles announced in the past few days. Both are experienced insiders at their respective firms. JP Morgan has appointed Nadia Schiavon as head of custody and fund…