News

by Greg Bright* There aren’t too many things you could buy in the investment world, be they businesses or hard assets, that will fall in value by nearly three-quarters over a period of more than 20 years. But NAB’s sale of MLC to IOOF reflects one. With some related transactions, such as buying the AVIVA…

Chant West Holdings shareholders, in the company now known as Consolidated Financial Holdings, approved with an almost unanimous vote, a return of capital recently (August 31). Until last month the listed company owned two businesses – Chant West and Enzumo. They were both sold in June this year. While the publicly available figures from the…

The gender pay gap is an age-old story. It’s one where the efforts of some well-meaning legislators and labour organisations have made only incremental gains over decades and which has just taken a big turn for the worse due to COVID-19. And the way forward when the repercussions of the pandemic have eventually subsided, doesn’t…

Towards the end of the annual Women in Super Summit, which was this year open to the whole industry rather than only members, it was clear that the already-poor position women have faced with their super compared with men is getting worse in the current economic and medical crisis. Government policy and party politics are…

With engagement between their fund managers – either internal or external – and investee companies increasingly being demanded by institutional investors, new complexities are emerging in the study of ESG principles and practice. The evolution of ESG investing is picking up speed. While they are interlinked, there is a lot more work going into the…

While most ESG strategies across the range of institutional, wholesale and retail investors remain active, over the past three years that has been rapid growth in passive ESG-influenced funds, both in their number and assets, according to Morningstar. Europe remains the biggest such market but the US, historically slow to adopt ESG funds, has grown…

When we speak of factors in the institutional investment world, we tend to think about equities investing. But fixed income and credit investing also have their factors. There are just not as many of them. Importantly, though, they can still be a “free lunch” for investors, according to Mellon’s Paul Benson. Benson is the head…

CheckRisk, the UK-based global risk manager and information provider, has taken the big step of offering financial institutions a once-only free risk appraisal of their banking counterparties. The firm, which helped clients through the GFC in 2008, believes most institutions and big investors were “blissfully unaware” of the nature of counterparty risks until then. Nick…

The climate finance investment gap is limiting the integration of climate change for companies and the financial sector across Asia, jeopardising the success of green finance globally, according to the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and Europe-based fund manager Amundi. The two groups plan to launch this week the ‘AIIB-Amundi Climate Change Investment Framework’, a tool aimed at helping with sustainable and responsible financing. The…

The Institute of Managed Account Professionals has announced the 2020 award winners across its seven categories. Unless you understand the dynamics of the managed accounts segment of the investment industry, the results may surprise. The main drivers of growth in managed accounts are the licensees and the multi-asset managers. The awards presentations were held, virtually,…

Metrics Credit Partners, just a sleepy institutional fund manager in the credit space a few years ago, celebrated its dramatic expansion in the retail sector last Thursday night (September 10). Having raised record sums for its LICs, including a raising which started early this year, the manager picked up the Fund Manager of the Year…

Fortnum Private Wealth, Count Financial and Link Advice – licensees in the wholesale financial advice space – will roll out Moneysoft’s digital ‘fact find’ service over coming months, as they move to automate the advice process. It’s all about improving efficiency in data management in the wholesale financial planner world. Advisors, at last, are getting…