News

Chris Drew Chris Drew left Sunsuper last Friday, where he was an investment manager, to complete the new investment team at the Australian Catholic Superannuation & Retirement Fund, where he becomes the head of public markets. He joins the other recent recruit, John Phokos, who joined from Workcover NSW earlier this month. Phokos is the…

by Paul Crean* Ongoing weakness in the global economy, falling commodity prices and the likelihood of the US Federal Reserve raising rates and pushing the US dollar higher this year means emerging market economies look set to struggle across the board. So, are there any attractive choices in the emerging market universe? The ability to…

Zane Bernstein GMO, the big global quant-orientated value manager, has parted company with three of its most senior executives in the Asia Pacific region, including the chief executive and head of business in Australia and the chief operating officer, both of whom were based in Sydney. Another senior person based in Singapore has suddenly left…

Philip King by Greg Bright The fortunes of multi-award-winning hedge fund managers Andrew and Philip King seem to be going from bad to worse following their former board colleagues’ revelations of a query by ASIC over trading in a resources stock in 2013. Are they being punished for being clever? Andrew, the chief executive, and…

Paul McNamara Australian investors are in a better position than most to incorporate emerging market debt within their portfolios because they can take advantage of the close correlation between emerging market currencies and the Aussie dollar. A new research note shows how this works. According to global manager GAM, when Australian investors leave unhedged their…

Anthony Quirk New Zealand’s largest boutique fund manager, which has a successful Sydney office, has been fined a record NZ$1.5 million (about A$1.4 million) after settling a long-running regulatory investigation into market manipulation charges last week. Under an agreement with the Financial Markets Authority (FMA), the NZ$3 billion-plus Milford Asset Management will pay a fine…

Graham Harman Following its recent long-term investing report, in which it urged investors to better diversify their portfolios in current market conditions, Russell Investments has honed in on the four Australian banks and questioned whether they are “worth the risk”. A paper (view here), written by Graham Harman, senior investment strategist, says that many investors…

Stephen Knight NSW Treasury Corporation (TCorp) last week completed the amalgamation of NSW’s funds management activities, it was announced by the NSW Treasurer, Gladys Berejiklian. The amalgamation makes TCorp a top-10 Australian investment manager, with more than $70 billion under management. The amalgamation involved over 12 months of project work between NSW Treasury, TCorp and…

Michael Gallagher Just as hedge fund managers decided on a theme for their annual AIMA Australia forum this year – ‘A Look Into the Future’ – came the passage last week of the legislation for the Investment Management Regime (IMR) reforms, which have been years in the making. Australian hedge funds and boutiques should be…

Andrew Ang  BlackRock has recruited an Australian-born finance professor at New York’s Columbia University, Andrew Ang, to head up a new global strategy group focused on smart beta strategies. Ang will oversee, initially, about US$125 billion in assets. The group will focus on systematic factor-based investing, most commonly referred to as smart beta, which is…

Lasse Heje Pedersen by Greg Bright I’ve always been fascinated by predominantly short-selling managers – those whose style have a dedicated short bias – of whom there are a sprinkling in the US but none in Australia. At least none who raise money from the public. They tend to underperform for long periods, often several…

Vanguard has gazumped MSCI and FTSE/Russell by moving to directly include China A shares in its emerging markets ETF products and strategies. The two index companies vacillated in their latest deliberations. The news from Vanguard, which is not known for aggressive marketing positions with new products or strategies, offers nimble investors a prime opportunity to…