News

Amundi Asset Management, Europe’s largest fund manager, has reassessed global developments over the past three months and produced a new outlook paper for markets in 2021. The latest view is more bullish than the last. The â‚¬1.66 trillion (A$2.01 trillion) manager says in a client report, ‘Cross Asset Investment Strategy’, that it expects better corporate fundamentals…

Raewyn Williams has resigned from Parametric Portfolio Australia and will leave the firm at the end of February, after seven years there. She is Australia’s best-known exponent of after-tax investing, who has been a prolific producer of global and Australian research on the topic. It is understood Williams, the managing director, research, who started her…

FNZ has won a last-ditch bid to relitigate the looming forced sale of Australian software firm GBST after the UK competition authority flagged possible mistakes in figures underpinning its earlier decision. In a notice published late last year, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said it would refer the case back for a rethink after…

Northern Trust has won another passive global equities gig with a bank-owned KiwiSaver fund following a mandate reshuffle at the Westpac scheme in New Zealand. Australia’s Ninety One was also a winner in the reshuffle. Along with several other changes, Northern Trust picked up a spot among six managers on the Westpac/BT international equities panel,…

Commonwealth Superannuation Corporation has partnered with Lifeline to bolster mental health support services and to assist programs aimed at destigmatising mental illness. The super fund joined SuperFriend as that organisation’s 24th super industry partner in August last year. The three-year partnership with Lifeline will see CSC, which has 730,000 members and more than $50 billion…

State Street Global Advisors will sharpen its ESG efforts on climate change and corporate racial diversity in 2021, adopting a more activist approach with investee companies. In a letter to major global corporations this month (January 11), Cyrus Taraporevala, SSGA chief, says the US$3.1 trillion manager will use its financial clout to pressure companies to…

Former BlackRock executive Holly Framsted is to become head of ETFs for Capital Group in the US, which plans to launch a slate of both equity and fixed income actively managed listed funds in 2022. Capital, which has about US$2 trillion (A$2.6 trillion) under management, will be adding the ETFs to about 40 mutual funds…

When a 25-year-old English fund manager with £21 billion (A$37 billion) under management discloses it had made a sizable investment in bitcoin, it is bound to give the institutionalisation of the crypto currency a big kickalong. This is especially so when the manager regards bitcoin as a potential store of wealth and not an alternative…

While distressed debt funds have mushroomed to record levels in major markets, helped by the belief that the pandemic is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, Asia has languished. Already a small market for the broader private debt alternatives asset class, Asian distressed debt funds in the market for capital have declined over the past five years, from…

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…