News

(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….

(Pictured: Andy Budden) Investing in broad market indices such as the S&P/ASX 200 may inadvertently give rise to unexpected geographic exposures, according to analysis by Capital Group, one of the world’s largest active fund managers. While investors have long known that many Australian companies are active in other countries, they may be surprised to learn that…

After its first custody review in more than 20 years, the $23 billion Cbus super fund is preparing to move securities servicing providers. The investment team has put a recommendation to the board to replace NAB Asset Servicing with JP Morgan Investor Services. The review, overseen by Trish Donohue, Cbus’s executive manager of investment management,…