News

Andy Karpisek  In a rare offering, veteran Australian inventor Andy Karpisek, 91, has put his entire portfolio of about 70 R&D projects and patents on the market for private sale. The projects are in various stages of development and cover a range of industries, including cleantech. Helping to promote the sale, publisher Victor Bivell of…

George Lucas A major survey of financial services professionals – including trustees, fund managers and advisors – has confirmed that readership habits have splintered dramatically due to the mushrooming dominance of online information sources. The survey, of 644 financial professionals, based primarily in Australia, showed that mainstream media had been marginalized in the rapidly evolving…

Ross Martin Ross Martin, the former chief executive of Media Super and an experienced advisor to corporate super funds, has joined the listed wealth manager and planning group Fiducian Financial Services in a new role as head of superannuation. Martin left Media Super at the end of 2012 after nine years with the fund and…

by Greg Bright Mercer is about to appoint a new securities servicing partner for its $25 billion under management in investment and super trusts – Northern Trust – following a review. The news, is another blow for incumbent NAB Asset Servicing. The review commenced last year and by earlier this year it was clear that…

Mark Fordree Robo-advice firm Ignition Wealth has made two senior hires ahead of its September 1 launch, building its investment capabilities alongside the online technology. The fintech company, controlled by Mark Fordree and Mike Giles, is the first of its kind to get an AFSL licence. Mark Clayton has joined from Mercer as head of…

Sara Gilbert EBS BrokerTec, the electronic foreign exchange (FX) and fixed income trading firm, has lifted its marketing effort for FX in Australia and New Zealand with the recruitment of Sara Gilbert as head of buy-side sales for the APAC region. Gilbert, an experienced financial systems marketer, was most recently a managing director of the…

Darrell Ludowyke  Link Group’s data services company, Empirics, has added four industry funds, with total membership of about 4.5 million people, to its client roster courtesy of its merger with SuperPartners, which took effect last December. The new clients are AustralianSuper (two million), Cbus (722,000), HESTA (800,000) and HostPlus (one million). They have signed up…

News wire service Reuters has put the Chinese state-owned conglomerate CITIC Group as the frontrunner in a three-horse race to buy Russell Investments from London Stock Exchange. Reuters last month had Towers Watson as the most likely acquirer. Reuters reported last week that CITIC was in negotiations with LSE for a deal reputedly worth about…

Share ownership by Australians has continued to slip, sitting at 36 per cent of the adult population at the end of 2014, compared with 38 per cent in 2012, but most of the slippage has been in “indirect ownership”, through a decline in the use of unlisted managed funds, rather than direct shares. The latest…

 Louise Davidson The Australian Council of Superannuation Investors (ACSI) has stepped up its campaign for more gender diversity on the boards of listed companies, signaling last week that it would be targeting those companies which have made little or no progress in appointing female directors in the coming annual meeting season. ACSI wrote to the…

Gillian Dudgeon by David Chaplin Despite analysis suggesting it would be “most efficient” to close the almost-drained Earthquake Commission (EQC) investment fund, which had NZ$6 billion (A$5.4 billion) invested prior to the Christchurch disaster, the NZ Government has backed its continued existence in a discussion document published last week. However, on current settings it will…

by Greg Bright The Government’s proposed requirement on big super funds to have at least one-third independent directors and an independent chair will have a knock-on effect in the SMSF and other small funds market. An unintended consequence of the Government’s proposal is that the 2,400 remaining APRA-regulated small funds will also be caught up…