News

(Pictured: Whitney Drayton) Artisan Partners, a US-based global manager, will open an Australian office next month. It has employed its former third-party marketer in Australia and New Zealand, Whitney Drayton, as a full-time executive to run the office in Sydney. Drayton brought Artisan to Australia in 2011 and has represented them since through his company Grey…

(Pictured: Justin Burman) Australian alternative managers who market their capabilities in Europe, such as infrastructure, private equity and real estate specialists, need to comply with the Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive (AIFMD). A number are yet to do so, according to BNP Paribas. BNP Paribas Securities Services has developed a guide for managers with the latest…

(Pictured: George Walker) Senior staff at Neuberger Berman, the New York-based global manager, have completed their full acquisition of the firm – a process which commenced in 2011 after the Lehman Bros ‘estate’ agreed to sell its 48 per cent holding. Neuberger has shown the benefits of staff control since it emerged, in 2009, from the…

This is our last investment outlook report focusing on 2015 – we promise. It’s from Morningstar, which should be – at least in theory – dispassionate about its views. In a nutshell: Australian shares present a challenge for investors next year. Morningstar’s annual outlook for the Australian share market says that the decline in prices…

(Pictured: Rob Holroyd) Rob Holroyd, a prominent hedge fund manager who launched his commodities strategies business in Australia in the late 1990s, has died suddenly after returning home to New Zealand for Christmas from his recent base in Zug, Switzerland. His firm, Commodity Strategies AG, was one of the casualties of the van Eyk Blueprint blow-up….

(Pictured: Gordon Orr) Investors struggling to come to grips with their exposure to China – whether to double up or down after the recent sharemarket jump – will find the decision even more difficult next year. McKinsey & Co’s veteran China watcher, Gordon Orr, presents his predictions. Orr, a director of McKinsey’s Shanghai office, says in…

(Pictured: Gordon Hagart) Lobbying by the Australian Council of Superannuation Investors has helped a big improvement across a range of ESG issues in corporate Australia as the organisation’s influence has grown with international expansion. NZ Super has become ACSI’s fifth international member. The ACSI annual report, published last week, says that the percentage of female directors…

PIMCO has added its considerable weight to the funds manager consensus view of a positive outlook for international growth next year – if not in Australia. Even the 40 per cent drop in oil prices contains more good news than bad. The latest PIMCO “Cyclical Forum” report, published last week, says that the drop in…

(Pictured: Wai Kwong Seck) State Street’s Asia Pacific head of global services and global markets, Wai Kwong Seck, has been promoted to its group management committee in a series of promotions including that of a new group chief operating officer. The Boston-based bank and fund manager announced last week that Mike Rogers has become president and…

(Pictured: David Chin) by Andrew Polley* Chinese capital for property development is being driven offshore, to the rest of Asia and Australia, because of declining returns and a continued trend to invest internationally, a conference for ‘Australia-China Property Developers and Investors’ was told last week. But David Chin, of consulting and research firm Basis Point, which…

The Centre for International Finance and Regulation is to fund individual research based on any of the 44 proposals presented last week in the final report of the Financial System Inquiry. The organisation has called for applications by February 13 – ahead of the March deadline for industry responses to the inquiry. CIFR said academics from…

by Steve Engdahl* Asset managers have tackled pricing issues for years. But what they haven’t faced – until now – is a minefield of thinly-traded markets and unprecedented regulatory scrutiny. While the subject of pricing isn’t new, it has never been more explosive – and the old way of running processes is being put to…