Analysis

Private debt investing is not exactly new. It is, however, enjoying a renaissance around the world as market conditions and the changing appetites of institutional investors have combined to focus attention on the alternative asset class. Interest rates are rising, valuations are stretched and the demographic shift to retirement is demanding yield-providing investments as well…

NAB’s New Zealand subsidiary BNZ has joined the post-Financial Markets Conduct Act (FMC) product renaissance with the launch of a new range of funds under its own banner. It is blending inhouse strategies from MLC and JANA with other external managers. And for the first time, too, BNZ will provide direct access for NZ investors…

In a series of papers prepared with Harvard professor George Serafeim, Calvert Investment Management has studied how the changing role of the corporation in society is providing new investment opportunities. The broader role of, especially, global companies is affecting their stock market valuations. Calvert, a US$12 billion ESG-specialist US and global manager founded in the…

Laurence (Larry) Fink, the founder, chairman and chief executive of BlackRock, by far the world’s largest asset manager, has used his annual letter to corporate CEOs to stir the pot about holding a long-term course in a technologically and politically disrupted world. Fink said that the vast majority of BalckRock’s clients were investing for long-term…

The demographic shift leading demand for retirement products, the trend to factor investing strategies and questions over market-cap benchmarks are combining to raise awareness for the importance of franking credits. But it’s not as simple as it seems. A new paper from implementation manager Parametric, ‘A Fresh Look at Franking’, revisits earlier work which showed that…

Unlisted infrastructure will also be impacted by expected volatility and higher interest rates this year, but the negative and positive may well cancel each other out, unlike listed assets. In a relative sense, unlisted infrastructure should be more stable in the aftermath of last year’s major and unexpected global events, such as the Trump presidency…

Lazard Asset Management is optimistic that emerging markets can weather the storm posed by the new Trump presidency and that the fundamental strength of their economies should outweigh the policy uncertainties of the new US Government. Hopefully. A new paper by the Lazard Asset Management emerging markets (EM) team, based in New York, which covers…

Research Affiliates, the US-based proponent of new-style passive strategies such as ‘fundamental’ indexing, has produced a paper outlining how investors can overcome potential principal-agent issues. The paper, ‘How Not to Get Fired with Smart Beta Investing’, says that adopting longer evaluation periods for a manager’s assessment is one way to reduce these issues. Research Affiliates has…

It seemed to wane last year, at least in the media, but according to US research house Greenwich Associates blockchain technology is moving from ‘proof of concept’ to ‘production’. Kevin McPartland, the head of research for market structure and technology at Greenwich Associates, says in a paper published last week that “smart contracts” look to…

State Street Associates, the academic research arm of the big custodian bank and fund manager, has published two studies on the behaviour of sovereign wealth funds with asset allocation and their thinking behind a shift towards private markets. The asset allocation study shows a big move towards alternatives and unlisted investments and increased exposure to…

Reflation has arrived along with broad economic recovery globally but consensus views on the outlook remain too cautious, according to BlackRock. Animal spirits are returning to the markets. The consensus numbers are further from BlackRock’s ‘Macro GPS’ forecasting model, which incorporates big data signals, than at any time since 2013, the BlackRock Investment Institute says…

Hedge fund returns recovered last calendar year after a troublesome 2015 which caused global outflows of an estimated $US83 billion. The aggregate return across hedge fund strategies for 2016 was 5.34 per cent, according to the annual performance report by eVestment. The best performing strategy globally was ‘distressed’, which had lagged most of the others…