News

Investec Bank said Friday that property funds management would remain a core business unit for the group in Australia following the sale of its “professional finance” business to the Bank of Queensland. The professional finance business includes deposits asset finance and leasing. BoQ told the market it would pay $440 million in the deal. Apart…

(Pictured: Martin Harris) Martin Harris, a former senior funds management marketer in Australia, including at Colonial First State and what is now UBS Asset Management, has become global head of institutional business at Jupiter Investment Management in London. The position is a new role for the big UK firm, which has concentrated most of its efforts…

(Pictured: Paddy Manning) by Greg Bright Australian Ethical Investment has bought the pioneering publication Ethical Investor and will continue its fortnightly newsletter, no doubt as a loss leader. The publication has always been a labour of love. But its story is also reflective of the history of ESG investing in Australia. Ethical Investor was the brainchild…

(Pictured: Martin Scott) A leading indicator of expected investment mandate activity – fund management sales recruitment – has picked up considerably. Here are several key hires to be announced in coming weeks, including the opening of a UK hedge fund firm’s office in Australia. >  Winton Capital, a UK-based hedge fund manager, which has been represented…

(Pictured: Rohan Singh) Northern Trust has picked up three big new asset servicing clients in Australia in the past few weeks, including, most recently, the $14.8 billion investments portfolio of IAG (Insurance Australia Group). While neither IAG nor Northern’s head of Australian business, Rohan Singh, were able to comment on the mandate last week, they supplied…

(Pictured: Phil Weinberg) We’ve been telling everyone for years but it now turns out that we were right: good execution of securities trading is important. It’s important not only for fund managers but also for super funds who are their clients and, increasingly, their competitors. Phillip Weinberg, the founder of Australia’s first broker-neutral trading firm, has…

(Pictured: John Stopford) There are many changes afoot in investment management and a lot of them are interlinked. The blending of fixed interest and multi-asset strategies is an interesting development, which is prompting pension funds to rethink the way they do asset allocation. After a 35-year bull market, global fixed interest is likely to be a…

(Pictured: Ron Bird) As submissions to the Financial System Inquiry are closed off, today, academics attached to the Paul Woolley Centre have questioned the fundamental assumption that a larger financial system is better for GDP than a smaller one. Professor Ron Bird and Dr Jack Gray, both former fund managers, produced a submission to the Inquiry…

(Pictured: Stephen Dunne) By Greg Bright Australian financial services firms have generally not travelled well. Of the banks, NAB lost a lot of money trying to expand in both the UK and US. Westpac never really became the bank of the Western Pacific as Pieter Huveneers* designed the name to be. ANZ has slowly gathered some…

(Pictured: Louise Davidson) By Penny Pryor Cbus is currently working with MSCI to identify the worst performing ESG stocks in the emerging markets index, for a new emerging markets index mandate. Speaking at a session on divestment at the Conference of Major Superannuation Funds last week, Louise Davidson, environmental, social and governance manager at Cbus…

(Pictured: Paul Schroder) AustralianSuper has completed the hiring of a strategy, performance and analytics team within the trustee office to better harvest and integrate the fund’s data sets. Paul Schroder, group executive membership, was excited about the calibre of the team and said its formation was the first step in understanding how the collection and integration…

(Pictured: Wes Palmer) After 15 years in asset servicing and custody, Wes Palmer has transitioned to broader investment sales and marketing, taking up a position at Mercer as a principal in the financial services division. The Melbourne-based position involves sales for the $17 billion Mercer super trusts, corporate super and administration. Palmer, a former British army…