Analysis

Everyone loves a good IPO story. Exopharm, up 175 per cent in the year of listing, last year, and Adriatic Metals, up 188 per cent. Then there was Ardea Resources the year before, up 850 per cent in the year of listing. But such sensational examples mask the real story across the IPO market. According…

For people doing operational due diligence on fund managers and other service providers for institutional investors, the examination of audited financial statements, a crucial part of the process, can be particularly difficult. Here’s a guide from Castle Hall, the global due diligence specialist. In the latest ‘primer’ in its ‘Due Diligence University’ industry education series,…

The dominos have started to fall for Australian-related class actions with the market having become “passive enough” that investors are looking to update their policies to ensure they can partake in the potential gains from legal actions. Two high-profile cases, Crown Resorts and Vocation, have deadlines today (March 4) for investor registration. According to Financial…

Chinese stock markets received a huge boost last week following the call by index provider MSCI to up its China A shares inclusion factor from the current 5 per cent to 20 per cent by the end of this year. The MSCI move could see up to US$125 billion flow into Chinese shares as funds…

Institutional investors are demanding more corporate disclosure on sustainability, remuneration and business strategy to guide proxy-voting decisions, a new global survey has found. In a release, Kiran Vasantham, Morrow Sodali director of investor engagement, said: “This survey provides issuers with valuable insights on investor expectations and voting policies.” Morrow Sodali is an international corporate governance advisory…

Jonathan Armitage, the CIO of MLC, will deliver the keynote address at this year’s AVCJ Private Equity and Venture Forum in Sydney, March 5-7. He has the timeless topic: ‘Global Investing in Turbulent Times: how are we positioning ourselves for the future?’ The Asian Venture Capital Journal reports on a short question and answer discussion…

The reporting season for ASX-listed companies which has started this month is shaping up as the most intriguing – and important – since the global financial crisis. Will sentiment and noise overshadow fundamental strength? Well known for his published analyses of the reporting by Australian companies and their pre-and-post reporting performance, Reece Birtles, the CIO…

Many big investors would be better off building their own diverse portfolio of hedge funds than using certain types of the many multi-asset strategies and products now on the market, according to a new paper by Mercer. The paper, ‘Making Sense of Multi-Asset’, focuses on two of the most popular of the four types of…

by David Chaplin The meteoric ascent of index-investing has yet to seriously distort financial markets and could, by contrast, spark new strategies for active managers, according to Mercer. In its thematic outlook for 2019, the firm says the investor index-rush has not, to date, cancelled out the ‘price discovery’ power of markets or created broader…

It’s the US versus the rest of the world in institutional investment management, new research from Fidelity Investments has found. The US is not as keen as almost all other countries on new technologies, new asset classes and socially responsible investing. The recently-published 11th annual Fidelity Institutional Asset Management global fund manager survey reveals a large…

Almost since indices were invented, primarily as a form of measurement, their power to influence the behaviour of market participants and therefore the whole market as defined by those indices has been well understood and sometimes criticised, particularly plain vanilla market-cap indices. But in the past five years this power has considerably weakened, according to…

Jeremy Grantham, 80, is all over the science of studying climate change and he doesn’t like what he sees. But, true to his famous fund manager roots, he is able to look at the investment implications and opportunities, while throwing some barbs at ostrich-like policy makers along the way. In a rare webinar for Australian…