News

Australian fund managers see opening new distribution channels and embracing digitalisation as their major challenges in a post-COVID environment, according to a survey by financial data communications group Calastone and UK publisher Funds Global Asia. The Australian survey, for which there were 44 respondents, was part of a larger global survey with 291 respondents. It…

Fund managers expect to double their technology spend from about 10 per cent of their operating expenses in 2019 to 20 per cent by 2023, according to a new study by Casey Quirk. The increase is driven by wanting to have broader and deeper ties to clients. The study, ‘Technology for the C-Suite: Driving Competitive…

Whether or not we are witnessing the early stage of an end to the longest drought for value managers in history, history tells us that when the rains come, it will be a deluge. Recessions and their aftermath are particularly good for value managers. At a client webinar organised by global value manager Pzena Investment…

Most of the world’s largest institutional investors – 438 sovereign wealth and public pension funds – had a tough time last year. They had to cope with government capital drawdowns alongside market volatility and other problems due to the pandemic. According to the annual report of Global SWF, a private organisation that researches the space,…

After a six-month search, BNY Mellon Investment Management has filled the gap at the top in Australia, recruiting experienced funds management CEO and marketer Paul Bolinowski as its new country head. He will be responsible for providing the overall strategic direction for and expansion of the Australian investment management business. BNY Mellon has a group…

Phil Moffitt, a former Australia head of Goldman Sachs Asset Management and renowned bond manager, and Chris Selth, an international equities manager in Sydney and New York for BT and Five Oceans, are undertaking a very different venture. They have formed an impact investing boutique, Beckon Capital, housed in a terrace-style block in Sydney’s increasingly…

Following forceful questioning by shareholders at its annual meeting last month comes news that a class action against IOOF, undertaken by Shine Lawyers, has progressed through the funding stage. A previously proposed action, through lawyers Quinn Emanual, was dropped early this year. Patrick Liddy, the principal of MSI Group consultants, and Shine Lawyers have been…

Due to its open-source ethos, bitcoin has travelled an unconventional growth path. For starters, no-one seems to know who invented it (rumoured to be a Sydneysider, possible pseudonym Hitoshi Nakamoto) but what we know is when it will all end – in 104 years when the last bitcoin will be mined. Putting its start behind…

by David Chaplin The NZ$1.5 billion (A$1.4 billion) Foundation North has replaced Cambridge Associates with the Australian firm JANA as investment consultants. The move ends a 10-year relationship between the big community trust and Cambridge. In a release last week (December 8), the Auckland-based trust, headed by Peter Tynan, said the trustees confirmed JANA on…

After nearly 20 years at Maple-Brown Abbott Ltd, Australia’s quintessential home-grown boutique fund manager, Dougal Maple-Brown doesn’t get too carried away with what for the past couple of months has been looking like, at last, a rotation in the style cycle. Dougal, a lawyer by background who moved into investment banking with Baring Bros, where…

Aided by its two new global funds management subsidiaries in the US, Perpetual is giving its institutional distribution capabilities an overdue boost. And it is starting to pay off. Trillium Asset Management, an ESG specialist acquired early this year, is up for mandates in Europe, Asia and Australia. “We just have to do the same…

Dan Higgins, who made a name for himself globally as the CIO of a successful fund of hedge funds manager, has returned to the Australian and New Zealand institutional market through a new third-party distributor, 3PD Pty Ltd. Higgins, CIO and a founding partner of Marylebone Partners LLP in London, has hooked up with the…