Analysis

The NZ Government will release climate risk scenario guidance for the financial and corporate sectors by year-end to support impending new carbon reporting standards. Alex White, Ministry for the Environment (MFE) sustainable finance team leader, told a funds industry gathering in Auckland last week that the in-production scenario analyses would help NZ investors better understand…

Sovereign Wealth Funds are embracing more active roles in domestic economies and sustainability while building on relationships with the private capital industry, according to research by Preqin and Baker McKenzie. A study, ‘Sovereign Wealth Funds in Motion’, was published last week (June 2) by alternative assets data provider Preqin, in partnership with global law firm Baker McKenzie.  The prominence of sovereign wealth…

Karl O’Shaughnessy, former hedge fund manager and head of foreign exchange for NAB, has been battling his concerns about FX trading for more than 25 years. He is now advising institutional investors on how to improve their returns. O’Shaughnessy recently formed SuperClear FX, an advisory business which also offers wholesale clients an implementation ‘product’, which…

“When it comes to both real estate and infrastructure there are a lot of things which are going to change,” says Kumar Kalyanakumar, the head of real assets in Australia for AXA Investment Managers. According to Kumar, covid-19 is a “punctuation mark” in history and he believes events like this cause us to re-prioritise our…

With records still being set by both equities and bond markets, investor uncertainty abounds. It would seem these times are made for both active management and experience. With bond markets, the possibility of higher inflation, especially in the US, prompts fears of rising interest rates and therefore falling prices, with investors looking further into the…

Six years after the Paris agreement on climate change action, most of the institutional investment world and the majority of major countries agree on what needs to be done. COP26 represents a gear shift. Being billed by some investors, including Paris-based global manager Amundi Asset Management, as a “make it or break it Moment”, the…

While Australia’s birth rate continued to slide during the height of covid-19 and immigration came to a halt, a portfolio manager at Martin Currie has recently been studying pre-natal medical records. Against a worldwide trend, and Australia’s multi-year pattern, the early indicators are that the rate of natural population growth is set to pick up….

The rise in impact investing in the past few years has been spurred along by the rise in ESG investing generally, which in turn has been spurred along by climate-conscious investing. For fund flows, climate wins hands down. Nuveen, the active funds management arm of TIAA in the US, is one of the oldest and…

KPMG believes $50 billion is about the minimum size for an APRA-regulated fund when the dust settles. Helen Rowell, the retiring deputy chair of APRA, believes it should be $30 billion. The figures were bandied about at the CMSF conference where mergers were discussed in some detail. Leeanne Turner, who has just been through one…

Demand for specialist transition services is on the rise as institutional investors focus on containing the upfront and hidden costs of firing fund managers, according to a new Mercer study. Authored by Mercer NZ head of consulting, David Scobie, the report says institutions need to carefully consider the bottom-line expenses and risks of sacking underlying…

There is growing concern about the relevance of broad market indices, especially due to their poor reflection of China’s growth. The main concern should probably be managers who hug them. Whether or not it’s the index producers to blame, or managers who are not as active as they claim, an interesting angle on what is…

Big investors are increasingly looking to make a difference with their commitments towards a net zero carbon target. They don’t have to raise direct equity capital to do so. In a recent note to clients, ‘Net Zero: the role of capital markets’, global equities manager Martin Currie says there is a common misconception that without…