News

Australasian Wealth Investments has confirmed the purchase of a second managed funds purchase and advice portal, agreeing to pay up to $12.5 million for YourShare, a small business based in the NSW southern highlands. The deal was foreshadowed in a presentation coinciding with AWI’s annual general meeting last month, at which was decided to turn…

(Pictured: Jane Ambachtsheer) It is often said that performance, in the form of investment returns, is difficult to predict, but costs are not. Yet investors continue to leave money on the table due to “friction costs”, according to a recent paper by Mercer. The paper, “Behaving Like an Owner: Plugging Investment Chain Leakages”, splits the frictions…

(Pictured: Rick Lacaille) The predictions for next year have started. Aided by a media which is still required to fill columns no matter what is happening, or not happening, fund managers and others are about to embark on their annual market forecasts. The Sunday papers are particularly fond of these predictions, most popularly asking various high-profile…

(Pictured: Andrew Barnes) By Greg Bright* Australasian Wealth Investments (AWI) last week transformed itself from an LIC – it started life as the Fat Prophets listed vehicle – into a traditional listed company after shareholders voted to remove the management company. As previously announced, most of the former investment portfolio has been cleaned out, allowing the…

(Pictured: Craig Mercer) Towers Watson has confirmed its new hedge funds and alternatives consultant, to join the Sydney office from the UK, as one of five recent hires in Australia. He is Craig Mercer, who has most recently headed up the London office of Dalton Investments LLC. Prior to the recent role at Dalton Investments, Mercer…

(Pictured: Connie Mckeage) OneVue is having a busy year. The privately held company has completed a pre-IPO raising with two cornerstone investors and restructured its management following its purchase of the Computershare retail fund registry business. It announced a new senior hire from IOOF last Friday. OneVue has merged its strategy, sales and service teams which…

(Pictured: Joanna Davison) A survey of about 6,000 members of 30 big super funds – and 50 employers from 11 of those funds – has found an increased, and continued positive, level of engagement. The survey, the sixth annual undertaking, is a joint initiative of the Fund Executives Association Ltd (FEAL), the Melbourne Business School and…

A massive pipeline of securities servicing reviews has developed which will make this year the most significant for changes in more than 10 years. Coupled with the reviews are reductions in prices which question the sustainability of services to super funds and managers. Custody and securities servicing reviews are known to be underway for: TWU…

(Pictured:Raymond Harbert)  Super funds and other investors interested in going down the benchmark-unaware path could do worse than study family offices and fund managers which have developed from private fortunes. Harbert Management Corporation, from Birmingham, Alabama, presents an interesting case study. Harbert, which started in the 1980s with a grab-bag of investments designed to diversify…

(Pictured:Wayne Bowers) Northern Trust Global Investments has not had a lot of exposure to Australia, unlike its securities services sister company. But interest in the firm recently increased following its being awarded four mandates by New Zealand Superannuation Fund. Wayne Bowers, Northern Trust’s international (non-US) CIO, says that international growth has been a focus over…

(Pictured:Matthew Beesley) Investors who follow the rules can generally do a good job in steady markets. Super funds look likely to produce, in 2013, on average, their best calendar year returns for 10 years. But change is all around us. As the cliché goes: it’s the one constant. Henderson Global Investors, a fund manager whose…

Comment by Greg Bright I’m not sure anyone knows the likely direction of the news media into the future. Fairfax last week accepted about 35 voluntary redundancies among journalists following the closure of the print edition of BRW. The company has shed more than 20 per cent of its staff in the past three years….