News

EAM Investors, a San Diego-based global small and micro-cap specialist manager, is looking to capitalise on the “innovation, disruption and re-invention” happening in the corporate world, especially in the small-cap space. “We’re looking for change in a company at the margin,” according to Travis Prentice. On a visit to Australia last week, the chief executive…

Scottish Widows has created a specialist responsible investment team to monitor sustainable activity across its range of funds. Unlike Australian and New Zealand funds, which tend to integrate ESG functions into their overall investment processes, UK funds more often outsource the delivery of their specialist ethical options. The Lloyds-owned Stg150 billion (A$252 billion) fund manager…

Despite the best intentions of divestment advocates, fossil fuels are unlikely to vanish from the global energy mix any time soon, according to a recent AMP Capital paper. In fact, both fossil fuel use and the global output of carbon dioxide look set to increase over the coming decades as population growth and ascendant emerging…

Fidelity International took out the major ‘fund manager of the year’ award at Morningstar’s annual event last Friday evening (February 28). Nearly 200 people, many of them advisors, also heard Jamie Wickham’s upbeat view on the advice industry. Wickham, the managing director of Morningstar for Australia and New Zealand, said, while introducing the proceedings, that…

On a day of celebration for the late Mavis Robertson’s achievements in the advancement of women in the super industry, along with her many other achievements, today (March 2), Morningstar is publishing a report on the progress of gender diversity in the industry over the past 20 years. In a nutshell: it’s zero progress. The…

Rupal Bhansali, the CIO of Chicago-based global equities firm Ariel Investments, has just published a book, ‘Non-Consensus Investing: Being Right When Everyone Else is Wrong’. Sadly, one of the wrong things we do is not having sufficient gender diversity at either board or senior management level. The book is edifying. Rupal is a relatively frequent…

CLOs are making a come-back, having received a largely undeserved bad rap through the global financial crisis. An under-appreciated fact is that they, on average, didn’t lose any money in the crisis. They came back to par. They are now shining in a low-yield environment. CLOs (collateralised loan obligations) make up nearly all of the…

Private credit markets represent a hot asset class for big investors at the moment. But they are more diverse, more heterogenous and more geographically different than you’d think. bfinance, the global institutional search firm, says the asset sub-class is attracting a lot of new interest in Australia and New Zealand. UK-based Trevor Castledine, a senior…

US-based impact investor ’57 Stars’, which invests actively in Australia, has developed a thematic approach to its investment strategy. While it still grabs opportunities as they present themselves, the firm is not as opportunistic as you would describe most impact investors. The privately owned firm, formed in 2005 and managing just under US$4 billion (A$6.1…

For those of us who are always on a diet, fish are great. For those of us who are also concerned about preserving the world’s wildlife, farmed fish are even greater. Aquaculture has become one of the world’s fastest-growing industries, including in Australia and New Zealand. In a presentation to a group of investors in…

Orient Capital, a Link Group company focussing on information to institutional investors and to listed companies looking to better liaise with their members and shareholders, has produced a guide for clients and others: ‘Keeping Pace with ESG’. The guide is being released in both Australia and the UK today and will be available at https://orientcap.com/….

by David Chaplin Multi-management has come a long way since Russell Investments helped pioneer the concept decades ago but some things never change. Jon Eggins, an Australian Russell portfolio veteran now based in the group’s Seattle HQ, said that, even today, trainee analysts must still pore over the famous ‘Duncan’s Tome’ that lays out the…