News

Cbus Super’s new chief executive will be Justin Arter, a former Australia country head for BlackRock and a former UK head of institutional business for that manager. Perhaps more importantly for his new role, Arter is also a former chief executive of VFMC, the Victorian Government-owned manager, which has a similar culture to that of…

by David Chaplin Fintech enthusiasts have until this week to lob in an offer for the Australian and New Zealand arms of collapsed German online payments firm Wirecard. The company has been labelled the biggest failure for investors’ due diligence in recent memory, according to global due diligence specialist Castle Hall. It has the dubious…

Constructing a diversified portfolio of different managers and strategies requires an understanding of how each relates to the others in different market conditions. Strategies which cluster together, in terms of having a positive correlation, should receive a smaller allocation in a diversified portfolio than those which don’t cluster. Those which help diversification should be allocated…

Most investment firms seem to have transitioned fairly smoothly to working from home compared with a lot of other industries, and that goes for big asset consulting firms around the world as well as managers. But the consultants, like managers, have new problems to try to solve. Frontier Advisors and its two global research partners…

Until a few years’ ago, multi-asset managers were consistently delivering reliable returns with good downside awareness. However, from 2018 there was a noticeable shift towards persistent underperformance in relative-value multi-asset managers which was outside the range of expectations. Frontier Advisors has produced a paper analysing the shift in performance, underlying drivers and the way forward….

In times of crisis, robust fund governance is vital, according to Sarah Cornelius, a Frontier Advisors consultant. She quizzed two fiduciary investors and another Frontier consultant on governance issues during one of last week’s sessions at the annual Frontier conference (on July 21), held virtually over three weeks this year. They discussed the impact of…

Blue Orbit Asset Management, a new Melbourne-based boutique equities manager, has snared a highly regarded specialist chief operating officer, Lewis Bearman, to take on that role with the firm from next week, August 4. He has 34 years of experience as a COO at three major funds management firms. The new position follows the launch…

In an overdue attempt to improve how co-mingled superannuation investment categories are presented to the general membership base, David Bell, a former fund manager and fund CIO who now runs the Conexus Institute, has called on the industry to comment on a working group’s recent deliberations on standardisation. He said last week (July 23) that…

Asset servicing contracts between big super funds and fund managers and their custodian banks are getting increasingly complex. Drew Vaughan, a specialist consultant in the space, recently oversaw a new contract between TelstraSuper and its incumbent provider, J.P. Morgan, in a competitive tender process. Assessing new services was an important part of this process. The…

Melinda Clarke, the much-loved former industry events organiser, passed away on July 12 after a two-and-a-half-year battle with cancer. More importantly, she was the much-loved wife of Jason Clarke, an investment industry entrepreneur, and the mother to their three young children: Maya, Martell and Hendricks. She was only 42. A virtual ‘celebration of life’ service…

Yarra Capital, the diversified Melbourne-based equities boutique, is building an impressive and experienced board, with the latest appointment announced last week (July 20). It is Mark Lazberger, who was most recently the chief executive of the former Colonial First State Global Asset Management (now First Sentier Investors, owned by Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group). Lazberger, who…

by David Chaplin AMP Capital cleaned-out its top ranks in Australia last week that included the exit of its well-respected head of real estate, Carmel Hourigan. In a statement, AMP Capital said, along with Hourigan, the leadership shake-out would also see the departures of three other executives. The three others to depart are: Adrian Williams,…