News

Philip Hope has joined specialist investment and wealth management consulting firm KONU, founded by Paul Toepfer and Greig Nicholson, as a partner.

A UniSuper member has accused the fund of potentially breaching its trustee obligations and the Corporations Act in a case reminiscent of one brought against Rest in 2018.

“Talent incubator” Future IM/Pact has partnered with four of Australia’s biggest super funds to help women into frontline investment roles. Investment internalisation is driving some of the interest.

MetLife’s institutional asset management business has acquired $1.5 billion impact bond manager Affirmative Investment Management (AIM) as it looks to build out its internal sustainability capabilities.

APRA has issued Vanguard a superannuation licence as it prepares to launch a disruptive play for Australia’s gargantuan retirement savings pool.

ASFA wants the YFYS performance test benchmarks tweaked to account for the exclusions and negative screens that faith- and values-based funds use.

Hostplus CIO Sam Sicilia believes the trillions of dollars washing around super could be put to good use in nation-building projects – and that criticisms of investing in unlisted assets are an “absurdity”.

NGS Super has made two new hires for its investment team, strengthening its capabilities in international and Australian equities as it works to make its portfolio carbon neutral by 2030.

Overseas, Australia’s biggest super fund is a small fish in a massive pond. To achieve the scale it wants it will have to dive deeper into the private markets, meeting stiff competition from its North American peers along the way.

Shame-based investment strategies yoked to simplistic environmental, social and governance (ESG) scoring systems have come under fire in a new report from UK data analytics firm, Util.

If negative screening worked, stocks in the sin bin should have lower firm valuations, higher future stock returns, and delist more often. They don’t.

“If you don’t know where you are in a bear market, then you should be in the game… We get asked: ‘is it too late?’ Our view is that it’s never too late to think about defensive strategies.”