News

(Pictured: Andrea West) Chant West has secured insurance group AIA Australia as its major sponsor for the third annual Chant West Super Fund Awards, to be held at a black-tie dinner at Sydney’s Ivy Ballroom on May 6. Chant West director, Andrea West, says: “AIA Australia is one of the country’s leading life insurers. They have…

(Pictured: George Carter) AMP Capital has delayed the handover of its NZ equities mandate to Salt Funds Management by up to a month. George Carter, AMP Capital NZ head of distribution, said transition of NZ$690 million-odd portfolio, originally scheduled for March 31, has been put back as the fund manager deals with “a few internal things”….

(Pictured: Louise Davidson)  Louise Davidson, the ESG investment manager at Cbus, has been appointed chief executive of the Australian Council of Superannuation Investors, a position made vacant by the resignation of Gordon Hagart in February after 18 months in the role. Davidson had been at Cbus since 2009. ACSI has 31 Australian super funds members,…

(Pictured: Jeffrey Levi) Listed fund management companies delivered an average of 33 per cent profit margin in 2014, the highest in five years, on revenue growth of 13 per cent, accord to a study by Casey Quirk & Associates. Australia’s seven listed firms outperformed all others in terms of revenue growth, with an average of 25…

(Pictured: Fiona Mackenzie) by David Chaplin The New Zealand Superannuation Fund (NZS) will be managing close to NZ$850 million (A$845 million) of local equities in-house after suspending one of its two remaining external managers in the asset class last week. In a highly unusual move, NZS pulled a NZ$281 million active New Zealand shares mandate from…

(Pictured: Raewyn Williams) Parametric Portfolio Associates has produced a new white paper – ‘Where Passive Falls Short’ – as a precursor to the firm’s launch of a range of tax-efficient smart beta strategies in Australia. A momentum-tilted tax-managed portfolio would have outperformed the ASX 200 after-tax by 56 basis points a year for 10 years. The…

(Pictured: Scarlett Dorney and Daphne van der Oord flank Marcus Christoe)  Women in ETFs (WE), an international association formed last year in the US, has started an Asia Pacific chapter with an active Australian group. The group held its first Australian event last month and rang the bell to open trading on the ASX on…

(Pictured: Richard Pzena) by Barrie Dunstan Pzena Investment Management, New York-based deep value investor, is still finding opportunities for its style of investing in current markets with a tilt to European markets, a selective over-weight stake in big oil groups and US financials – and a recent sortie into Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation. Richard Pzena, founder…

There appears to be a disconnect between big investor expectations and their fund manager realities in the incorporation of ESG issues in decision-making, according to the latest Mercer survey. The survey was sponsored by a global alternatives manager, LGT Capital, and includes interesting views on ESG in alternatives. Mercer has been at the forefront of…

(Pictured: Mark Cernicky) The big call for global fixed income managers this year is not so much the continued search for yield or even the need for more credit, but how to benefit from the restructuring in the energy sector. According to Mark Cernicky, Principal Global Investors managing director and head of global fixed income, the…

(Pictured: Tony Booth) The annual survey by Liquidnet of traders at asset management firms around the world, published last week, shows a major concern about liquidity to cover an anticipated increase in global investment flows. The flows are mainly expected into the US and EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa). The survey of 115 buy-side equity…

(Pictured: Jason Hsu) by Greg Bright In the 1990s Russell Investments launched two ASX indices in Australia, a Russell Value Index and a Russell Growth Index. They shut them down a few years later because no-one wanted to pay for this information. I’m starting to wonder whether the very notion of ‘value’ and ‘growth’ has subsequently…