News

(Pictured: Ian Martin) State Street has restructured its senior management in three of its four divisions across the region, with Sydney-based Ian Martin, who ran global markets and securities services in Australia and southern Asia, being promoted to a new role in Hong Kong. He is being replaced by Chris Taylor, who is moving from Hong…

(Pictured: Sonja Lee) Sonja Lee, Towers Watson’s marketing director in Australia, is to join the consulting firm’s prestigious ‘Thinking Ahead Group’ (TAG2.0), based in the UK, from early July. In her new role, Lee will also be revisiting the skills she needed in her previous occupation in management consulting. She has been at Towers Watson for…

(Pictured: Suzanne Holden) Suzanne Holden, chief operating officer of the Link Group, didn’t mince her words at last Friday’s (May 9) AIST superannuation administration symposium. She said up-front costs associated with SuperStream have blown out and estimates of longer-term savings of $1 billion a year were “fanciful”. She was speaking on a panel session with the…

(Pictured: Philip Metcalf) Socius Technologies, a UK-based investment technology start-up, which has opened a regional office in Hong Kong, has developed a form of protected pensions service for super funds which uses portfolio insurance strategies. It appears to be a more palatable alternative for members who have so far been reluctant to give up most or…

(Pictured: Robert Caporale) Milestone Group is expanding its North American presence and has hired an experienced securities services executive, Robert Caporale, from JP Morgan to head up the operation, based in Boston. Caporale has spent the past 12 years at JP Morgan in strategy business and sales roles, most recently as head of sales for the…

(Pictured: Kenneth McAtamney) Kenneth McAtamney thinks that recent trends in investing appear to be veering away from old-fashioned fundamental beliefs and something important is being lost in the process. “What if we just invest in great companies?” he asks. McAtamney, a partner in and portfolio manager for global manager William Blair & Co, says “better” companies…

(Pictured: Peter Tierney) After the global financial crisis the G20 finance heads decided on three things: to have more over-the-counter (OTC) trading in electronic and lit markets; to have third-party clearing for settlements; and compulsory OTC daily reporting. The last one, at least, is being phased in now. DTCC, the industry-owned global infrastructure provider for securities…

(Pictured: Steve Hall) Comment by Greg Bright Every super fund CEO I’ve ever met, which is most of them, has said to me that he or she runs the fund as a business. As I get older and grumpier (my friend Jack Gray says it’s OK to be that way and he’s a lot smarter than…

(Pictured: Nial Gooding) Boutique Asian equities and Australian small-cap manager Eight Investment Partners (8IP) has closed its Hong Kong office. Nial Gooding, the experienced investment manager there, is now looking to form his own boutique. Gooding said last week that, after 20 years in Hong Kong, he would remain there and look to build a new…

(Pictured: Neil Wild) JANA Investment Advisers has awarded a A$385 million mandate through its implemented consulting unit to Causeway Capital Management for global equities. Causeway, which is represented in Australia by Neil Wild and Michael Dorph, is an LA-based value manager for global equities. The firm, which was established in 2001 and has total funds under…

(Pictured: Ben Griffiths) Institutional investors should revisit their approach to constructing equity portfolios in order to take advantage of innovations in the industry, according to a report in Towers Watson’s new publication: Equity investing: Insights into a better portfolio. The report notes that investors have been diversifying away from equities in recent years, yet insists that…

(Pictured: Joe Antonellis) Official institutions are looking to new markets and a broader range of assets as they search for greater returns, according to a new report by State Street, called ‘New Horizons for Official Institutions’. More than 60 senior executives at official institutions – defined as central banks, sovereign wealth funds (SWF) and public pension…