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BetaShares has ticked over the $1 billion mark for its three ESG-orientated ETFs. This represents roughly 10 per cent of all of its ETF money and 70 per cent of all the ETF money in ESG and ethical strategies listed on the ASX. The BetaShares story in the ESG space emulates a bigger evolution in…

AXA Investment Managers has shown that, in the coronavirus crisis, funds and strategies which have an ESG bent outperformed those that didn’t. This is intuitive. The client note supports the notion that an observance to ESG principles adds value for investors, especially in market downturns. It’s mainly a risk thing. The AXA-IM note, authored by…

Northern Trust has announced a new service to help institutional investors and their managers analyse their portfolios for ESG factors. It’s available through the big custodian’s Investment Risk & Analytical Services (IRAS) group. According to Serge Boccassini, the senior vice president for global product, accounting and analytics, who has been at Northern for more than…

Applying professional after-tax management in the transitioning of portfolios by super funds can save at least 30bps in the portfolio’s change-over costs, according to new research by Parametric, the specialist implementation manager. Transition managers don’t always look closely at after-tax impacts. The research report, ‘The Sting in the Transition Tail’ says that both specialist transition…

by David Chaplin, with Greg Bright* AMP confirmed last week that it officially ended an almost two-year long mission to offload its ‘manage for value’ NZ wealth business. In the process, David Murray, AMP chair, managed to bemuse the industry with a call for more pay for the beleaguered company’s senior executives. As previously reported,…

JANA Investment Advisers, the staff-controlled associated company within the NAB group of investment management and advice offerings, is making a major foray into the wholesale market, expanding on a beachhead established last year. JANA, which was previously fully owned by NAB but, since 2017, 55 per cent owned by staff, launched its first set of…

John Casey, a long-time consultant and co-founder of several consulting firms, including Casey Quirk, died last week of a heart attack. He was 77. Casey Quirk is best known in Australasia because of its director Benjamin Phillips, who orchestrated the sale of the business to Deloitte. Casey, who died at his home in Wilton, Connecticut,…

The A$45 billion Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) of New Zealand has sold down about $A47 million of energy stocks since rewriting its exclusion list last December in the wake of political pressure. The NZ Government fund is one of the most respected in Australasia. Paula Rebstock, ACC chair, told a parliamentary annual review committee in…

The Australian funds management market experienced record net outflows during March, outpacing similar trends in Asia and Europe, new figures from Calastone reveal. Calastone, the global back-office fund service provider, reported net outflows across its Australian network hit almost A$4 billion in March as panicked investors headed for the exits. According to the Calastone metrics,…

The wholesale investment platform Powerwrap, which uses Praemium technology, has let go all of its sales and marketing team. The firm has also let go two junior sales people who hadn’t actually joined the company, but were contracted to do so. Will Davidson, the managing director of the listed company, did not return a contact…

In a world of low-to-no interest rates, real estate debt has become very interesting, especially given the COVID-19 crisis. After all, real estate is visible and debt is definable, with an agreed yield to investors. For active managers, the current environment is quite rosy compared with other asset classes. According to David Maki, a senior…

The Chant West Awards, being held by virtual medium – webinar – on May 10, are, once again, dominated by not-for-profit super funds in terms of the nominations. But not all of them are such. Commercial funds are coming back, it would seem. Especially in the innovative categories. The list of finalists show the usual big…