Analysis

by Suzanne Holden* The industry is once again facing significant transformation with the recent Federal Budget, the Productivity Commission report and the Royal Commission all proposing changes. But this will be an evolution rather than the feared revolution, in my view. Let’s face it, this industry, since inception, has endured continual tampering – with every…

Hedge fund managers are increasingly putting their assets to work in the ESG space, with more than 10 per cent, according to a global survey by the Alternative Investment Management Association, allocated to such strategies. The survey coincides with new activity, too, in Australia, ahead of the next industry Forum which will include an ESG…

by David Chaplin The global managed funds industry reaped the largest harvest of inflows in a decade last year, according to a new Morningstar report, with passive vehicles the major beneficiary. Overall net flows into “global open-end funds and exchange-traded products” hit almost US$2 trillion during 2017, more than double the US$835 billion recorded the…

In a rapid-fire series of conference sessions organised by information provider Bloomberg in Sydney last week, a group of high-profile super fund investment executives had their say across a range of issues and trends. They are not as happy as you might think they should be. The participants were: Mark Delaney, CIO of AustralianSuper; Brendan…

by Greg Bright With a big question mark over both equities and bonds because of their valuations, institutional investors have been seeking, for some time, to further diversify their portfolios with uncorrelated assets. Increasingly, they are combining several trends to use risk premia strategies to meet this aim. At an investor roundtable in Melbourne last…

A surge in funds manager searches by institutional investors in the year to March was led by appointments in private markets, in both number of searches and the size of the mandates, according to the quarterly report from search consultant bfinance. The bfinance quarterly analysis also shows that there was a significant increase in interest in…

Comment by Greg Bright There has been lots of talk about AMP within the funds management and advisory sectors of the industry in recent weeks. Everyone, including insiders, has a story or two and has heard many more. Who was to blame; what can be done to save AMP? But the announcement that former CBA…

What Australians call ‘micro caps’, of course, are not what the Americans call them. Ours are not only a lot smaller, they have different risk/return characteristics. Brookvine, an Australian manager and packager of investment strategies, is about to round out its range of micro-cap funds. They are worth a good look. Brookvine, based in leafy…

by Greg Bright For many folk in the industry, the name change from BT Investment Management to Pendal Group, at a ‘ringing-of-the-bell’ ceremony at the ASX last Friday, was just a name change. For the old timers, the amateur historians and industry observers amongst us, it was much more than that. The King is dead;…

BMO Global Asset Management, which has long been an active ESG-orientated manager, has shown in its latest annual ‘Responsible Investment Review’ how the growing acceptance of ‘sustainable development goals’ (SDGs) can be mapped to allow greater understanding of a portfolio’s impact on the world. Richard Wilson, BMO GAM’s chief executive and CIO, says in the…

The Morningstar quarterly view of asset classes, published last week, emphasises the over-valuation of most equities and bond markets, including Australia’s. Despite a few minor pockets of value, the big research house has gone longer to cash in its own recommendations. The quarterly ‘economic briefing’ says that, although key equity asset classes recorded losses over the…

The annual assessment of international managers operating in, selling to and selling from China, has shown some changes among the top ranks. China is now the ‘priority for most global managers’, according to the latest Z-Ben study. UBS, Schroders, BlackRock, Fidelity and Manulife are the big winners. Z-Ben, the Shanghai-based research firm which specialises in…