Analysis

By 2041, Australia’s super funds will swell to enormous size. How they invest our retirement savings will become an even trickier prospect. Over the next 20 years, the superannuation system will grow to a colossal size – an estimated $9.2 trillion, or 206 per cent of its current size, according to a report from Deloitte’s…

Cash is still trash for hedge fund legend Ray Dalio, who believes the world is entering a new paradigm characterized by internal and external conflict that will only intensify in the years ahead. Dalio, founder of Bridgewater Associates and one of those polymath billionaire investors who frequently turn their attention to issues beyond pure finance,…

This is the last edition of Investor Strategy News for the year. We will next publish on January 10, 2022. Here are some thoughts on the year past, based on reader reactions to our stories. Our most popular for the year was our coverage of the Australian Catholic Superannuation and Retirement Fund’s APRA performance test…

No amount of hard data or compelling evidence is going to stop people who want to use their super to buy a home. And super funds might have to help out after all. The idea of using superannuation for housing has a simple allure that has seen it revived several times in the thirty-odd years…

The Morrison Government wants to present a small target on superannuation at next year’s election. But Labor has big ideas for the sector that could be impossible to match. Superannuation might well be the Liberal Party’s Moby Dick. It’s a popular policy inextricably tied to Labor and the union movement, and while they can barely…

Investor time horizons pulled back slightly while corporate capital allocators took a much longer view during 2020, according to a new study. The analysis from institutional think-tank, Focusing Capital on the Long Term (FCLTGlobal), found investor time horizons shrank by 2.3 per cent last year as companies pushed out their expected capital return timeframes by…

Investor concerns about the pandemic are fading. All eyes are now on the burgeoning threat of cyber-attacks, and what they mean for financial system stability. The Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation (DTCC) risk barometer was launched in 2013, and provides a handy insight into what’s worrying investors in any given year. And after two years…

Thanks in part to the pandemic, employers have sufficient awareness of mental health problems in the workforce, their human and economic costs. Now is the time for programs to solve them. A multi-country multi-industry webinar last week (December 9) looked at how employers should learn from the impact of covid-19 and put in place processes…

Casey Quirk, the funds management advisory arm of Deloitte, has predicted more M&A activity because of the continued better profits coming from alternative over traditional managers. In a client report last week (December 9) Casey Quirk says alternatives managers, or those primarily focused on private markets, consistently generate higher profit margins than traditional firms, or…

The uncomfortable truth is that slavery, even in its more modern form, still exists. The UN estimates there are approximately 40 million victims of modern slavery around the world. The exploitation of people for commercial gain is deeply intertwined into everyday products and services through our global supply chains. This is a serious global issue…

Private markets assets are “ripe for the picking” for fund managers and administrators quick to use distributed ledger technology, as investment operations are on the cusp of “great change”. So said David Mackaway, the COO of Challenger Group, at the Calastone ‘Connect Forum’ last week (December 2. He was interviewed by Justin Christopher, Calastone director…

With COP26 a turning point in net-zero thinking, at least for investors and managers, Ninety One has expressed concern over insufficient focus on ‘real world decarbonisation’. The global multi-asset and specialist manager is presenting its 2022 investment outlooks presentation, ‘The Challenges of Normalisation’, this week (from December 6). In it, Hendrik du Toit, Ninety One’s…