News

(Pictured: Anne-Marie Corboy) One of Australia’s longest-serving industry fund chief executives, Anne-Marie Corboy, has announced her intention to step down from the $29 billion HESTA at the end of February next year. Having been appointed to her role in 1998, she said in a release last Friday, she was now hoping to develop a portfolio of…

(Pictured: Feifei Li) The rise in popularity of smart-beta since the global financial crisis has prompted a resurgence in debate about the various factors which quant managers use in devising their strategies. More importantly, whether the characters these factors exhibit are likely to persist. The low-volatility premium is particularly topical and is winning hearts and minds,…

(Pictured: Martin Goss) World rankings of institutional funds probably don’t mean much to the underlying investors and fund members but the data collection often exposes some interesting trends around the global pensions industry. Towers Watson’s annual Top 300 Funds report was released last week. In the latest Top 300, compiled by Towers Watson and ‘Pensions &…

(Pictured: Damien Hatfield) Damien Hatfield, one of the most influential hedge fund managers in Australia, and his partner David Louie, have joined multi-affiliate manager Ascalon Capital in a sales and marketing capacity. Hatfield, sometimes referred to as the godfather of the Australian hedge fund industry, and Louie, will retain their consulting business, Triple A Partners, in…

(Pictured: David Bone) Citi has introduced a service for super funds and managers to help them capitalize on the launch of the Shanghai-Hong Kong Stock Connect program, which will enable foreign investors to buy China ‘A’ shares without a QFII quota and for Chinese investors to more easily access foreign markets. The Stock Connect program, which…

Not only are active managers more likely to outperform their benchmarks in emerging markets, the outperformance is more likely to persist than for managers in the major asset classes, according to a study by Segal Rogerscasey. The study, published by the consulting firm’s Australian research partner Frontier Advisors, is part of a series which looks…

(Pictured: Geoff Lloyd) Perpetual has hit the growth phase of its management plan, confirming the establishment of a global equities team in the process of delivering, last week, its best profit performance for several years. The global equities team, as reported previously (ISN May 18, 2014), follows an incubation period of just over three years whereby…

(Pictured: Patrick Bolton) Do stock prices represent a good measure of a company’s fundamental value? Not according to professor Patrick Bolton of Columbia University. A good illustration of this is the market’s complete failure to price risks associated with climate change, he says. Professor Bolton is to address the annual Paul Woolley Centre conference at the…

(Pictured: Nick Bullman) by Greg Bright At the annual Portfolio Construction Forum last week, which took the 500 attendees on an entertaining journey through the past 100-or-so years, including the evolution of investment theory and practice, the audience warmed to the importance of risk. By the end of the event, during which they were peppered with…

(Pictured: Amin Rajan) Pension funds which did well through the market turmoil of the last decade, according to Amin Rajan, the chief executive of CREATE-Research and an Oxford don, had three things in common which meant they did not need to rely on market recovery to bail them out. They had strong investment beliefs, they had…

Richard Smith, the long-time CIO and CEO of the $20 billion South Australian Government manager Funds SA, is to retire soon. Applications for the CEO role closed last Friday. Smith was on leave last week, with John Piteo, the chief financial officer, acting as CEO. Smith will remain at Funds SA, after he returns from…

(Pictured: Ian Knox) Shares in HUB24 jumped on the news as the listed financial systems company announced last Thursday its takeover of advisor licensee Paragem for cash and shares spread over the next three years. The deal, and response to it, is a fillip for the whole IFA market. Under the deal, Paragem founders, Ian Knox,…