News

The Israel Institute of NZ lobbied to halt the exclusion of certain banking stocks from the NZ Superannuation Fund’s portfolio this year, according to recently released documents. In an Official Information Act (OIA) request on April 12, the local Israel association asked for confirmation the NZ Government’s largest super fund had told underlying managers that…

LGIA Super, in the process of merging with Energy Super, last week (April 30) confirmed the appointment of National Asset Servicing as custodian for the new fund. This follows last week’s announcement that LGIA will buy the Suncorp wealth management business, making only the second industry fund to buy a retail-orientated business after First State…

Evergreen Consultants has teamed with Generation Life for the launch of an ESG-orientated multi-manager investment bond, believed to be an industry first. The bond follows a model portfolio developed by Evergreen, called the Responsible Growth Model. The research and ratings firm says the model was created to provide advisers and investors with a long-term portfolio…

After repeated and universal criticism from all major super industry bodies, the Government has agreed to two amendments to its performance benchmark as part of the Government’s proposed Your Future, Your Super legislation. The Government announced last week (April 28) that it would allow the inclusion of infrastructure and unlisted property as well as administration…

Michael Rice officially entered the wind-down period of his career last Friday (April 30) with the completion of the sale of Rice Warner, now to be known as Deloitte Superannuation. All but a handful of administrative staff transferred, moving out of the heritage-listed 2 Martin Place office, around the corner and a few hundred metres…

The China growth story is putting increasing pressure on index providers to maintain the integrity of their indices. Emerging markets indices, for instance, may be becoming irrelevant. According to Rob Lovelace, the president and vice-chairman of Capital Group and one of the world’s most influential investors, the index providers “don’t really want to be the…

While the consensus view of credit markets is that investors should be long, at least one credit manager, Maurice Meijers of Robeco Asset Management, takes the other side. In the global equity and fixed income manager’s quarterly outlook delivered last week (April 22), Meijers, the chief executive of the firm’s Singapore business and a fixed…

In a highly unusual move, the Financial Markets Authority (FMA) has cracked down on fund managers advertising post-COVID boom-time annual returns. The regulator has warned managers that advertising any “phenomenal” returns garnered over the 12 months to March 31 could “mislead investors”. Global share markets bounced back spectacularly from the brief COVID-induced shock early last…

It was little more than a year ago that trading spreads across a range of instruments had blown out to record levels, courtesy of the first market impact of covid-19. Now, they are as narrow as they have ever been. It’s that sort of volatility with which most of the investment community has had to…

While ESG investing through equities attracts most of the limelight, fixed income is increasingly gaining the attention it deserves. The asset class is, after all, about 40 times the size of the equities market. In a webinar last week to coincide with World Earth Day (April 22), Insight Investment Australia hosted Joshua Kendall, the firm’s…

About a third of securities trading firms on both sides of the deal experienced operational stresses during the peak covid-19 volatility last year, according to a new DTCC white paper. The paper, carried out by global back-office behemoth DTCC (Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation) and consultancy firm McKinsey & Company found some weak links in…

Research Affiliates has taken the study of factor timing to a user-friendly new level through a paper which argues that the market’s momentum and valuation are good predictors of economic influences. The paper, by Mike Aked, director of research for Australia, shows that a strategy based on a factor’s discount to historical averages of value…