News

(Pictured: Sean Healey) The bigger multi-affiliate managers are a good proxy for the state of funds management in general and the biggest, in terms of manager spread, is Affiliated Managers Group. It’s fourth-quarter results, released in the US last week, signal the good times may have returned. AMG, which has a five-person sales and client…

(Pictured: Andrea Slattery) Technical connections to its customers – fund managers, registry providers and brokers and platforms – represent the final phase prior to commencement for the ASX’s mFund Settlement Services, following the last regulatory hurdle being overcome last week. ASIC’s approval followed the completion, from the ASX side, of the required technology build which…

(Pictured: Stephanie Weston) Stephanie Weston, the director of investment management of AMP Financial Services who oversaw about A$90 billion in assets, left the firm last Friday because of the review of her 17-person team which will now be either abandoned or integrated into the investment teams at the associated AMP Capital Investors. Weston, a former…

(Pictured: Andrew Lill) Morningstar is looking to better integrate its investment management group, Ibbotson Associates, in the Asia Pacific region and globally, with the appointment last month of Andrew Lill, the respected former asset consultant, as CIO for Asia Pacific. This will allow Daniel Needham, who was promoted in May last year to global Morningstar…

(Pictured: Tim Martin) What are alternatives these days? And do they need to fit into their own “bucket”? What is the future for portfolio construction as big super funds grow very big? Tim Martin, head of alternative assets at Tyndall Asset Management, presented some interesting observations last week. He said, at the 10th annual press…

(Pictured: Ross Bernays) The proposed merger between Health Industry Plan and Prime Super, which has been under discussion for at least three months, will result in a more sustainable and competitive fund of $2.4 billion and 150,000 members. Under the announcement last week, HIP members will transfer under the ‘successor fund transfer’ on May 1,…

Investors who have enjoyed the rewards from two strong years of equities performance may now be thinking it’s time to lock in the gains. How do you do that? Towers Watson says options should be used more extensively. In its annual ‘Global Investment Matters’ series of articles published last week, Towers Watson says investors who…

(Pictured: Chris Clayton) BT Investment Management has filled the role of head of sales and marketing, vacated last year by Martin Franc, with the recruitment of the similarly experienced Chris Clayton from National Australia Bank. The move was announced last Friday, together with the recruitment of Hayden King from FuturePlus as chief operating officer. Clayton…

(Pictured: Gabriel Radzyminski) Despite the efforts of organisations such as the Australian Council of Superannuation Investors and researchers at Ownership Matters and other proxy advice firms, inertia reigns supreme among shareholders of Australia’s big listed companies, according to Gabriel Radzyminski. Radzyminski, one of only a handful of fund managers who refers to himself as an activist…

(Pictured: Randal Jenneke) Australia has a lot of Aussie equities managers. There are 139 Aussie equities funds in the Mercer survey, for instance, and this does not include hedge funds, insurance and government funds, and funds which don’t pass various requirements for entry to the survey. So, a newcomer, even one with a great international pedigree,…

(Pictured: Ha Thanh Tuan) As emerging markets continue their price recovery, notwithstanding a little stuttering by the Chinese economy, frontier markets, too, are attracting attention again. One of the darlings of Asia prior to the start of the global crisis, Vietnam, is looking more promising. According to a recent newsletter by Asia Confidential’s James Gruber, a…

(Pictured: Graham Hand) Cuffelinks, the free weekly newsletter about investments started by former Colonial executives Chris Cuffe and Graham Hand, has introduced a monthly markets analysis service and opened the doors to paid sponsorship for the first time. The monthly ‘Market Monitor’ section is: “A short review of the economic conditions in major global markets including…