Analysis

The China growth story is well known to international investors but the best way to access profitable growth and the various risks continue to evolve as part of that story. In a session devoted to ‘Investing for Change in China A-Shares’ at last week’s JANA annual conference (September 16), Wenchang Ma, Hong Kong-based portfolio manager…

The inquiry into common ownership has given us that rarest of things: a moment of bipartisan stupidity. There are so many wonderful ways to waste taxpayer money. You can use it to pay for business-class flights to Canberra, or Craig Kelly-style political stunts, or even give it away to profitable multinational corporations in the middle…

With complaints about its efficacy still reverberating through the super industry, the YFYS performance test is to be extended next year to cover certain member investment options. Sustainability will be a big loser. Having delivered its first-year test results last month (August 31), the Treasury-instigated APRA-implemented test for big super funds found that the MySuper…

Last year a big super fund, Aware Super, shocked the M&A market in Australia with a surprise bid for a listed company, OptiComm. It signalled a new era in competition among players at the big end of town. It was the first time a super fund had tried to buy a whole listed company in…

The advent of Your Future Your Super (YFYS) and a new wave of climate regulation means institutional investors are increasingly turning their gaze towards decarbonisation, according to Northern Trust Asset Management. Scott Bennett, Northern Trust Asset Management head of quantitative research and client solutions for Australia and New Zealand, believes YFYS and other regulations have…

PIMCO, the world’s largest fixed income manager, believes that there is more risk in the current inflation bogey than the market is anticipating. It has published what is likely the most authoritative look at the current inflation concerns and suggested what investors should be doing about them. The PIMCO paper, ‘Assessing Inflation: Theories, Policies and…

Semiconductors are ‘the new oil’. The big problem is getting them. “What we’re seeing is an explosion in the amount of data gathering and measurement and functionality across whole swathes of industries,” says Matthew Reynolds, Capital Group investment director for Australia. “Chips are literally going into every device you can think of – not just…

bfinance, the global fund-manager search and research consultant, is moving into the wholesale wealth management sector, having completed its first global survey in the space. The survey of 120 wealth managers, including about 10 from Australia, shows a pattern of trends which are similar to those in the institutional market where bfinance has focused its…

The 88,000 members of Australian Catholic Superannuation and Retirement Fund (ACSRF) are about to be very confused. As are members of some other big super funds. Forty-year-old members in ACSRF’s default MySuper product, LifetimeOne, will be told they just earned an average 20.9 per cent from their super (after fees and taxes for the year…

Supported by record retail inflows, ESG-focused investing has, finally, become ‘the norm’, according to panelists at least two of the sessions at last week’s (August 31-September 2) AIST ASI conference. But one of the interesting, most recent, trends within this trend, is how climate change action and inaction has given a very short-term focus to…

In the past 10 months, since November last year, the investor’s decision on China has done a fully circle – from not whether to invest but how to invest, back to not how but whether. It was in November that the Chinese Government scuttled the US$37 billion IPO of Ant Group, the financial services affiliate…

As investors have looked to put more sizzle into their fixed interest portfolios for extra yield, a sector within the ESG universe has been, increasingly, providing just that – impact bonds. For big super funds the main game has been integration of ESG principles throughout portfolios, including fixed income, and whatever allocation they may have…