Analysis

Believe it or not, the funds management industry is in better shape than it has been for years. However, disruption, due to a raft of technological developments, is happening now. Managers have to adapt quickly in order to survive, according to a paper by SEI Investment Manager Services. SEI, a major US-based fund manager, administrator…

(pictured: Mike Baird) by Greg Bright He may have been on the back foot over shark deterrents on NSW beaches and the cruel world of greyhound racing, but last week the NSW premier, Mike Baird, was able to stand proud before the Australian investment community on a much more important subject. He told the annual Impact…

(pictured:  Ben Thornley)  What is making impact investing a discrete asset class is the gradual development of robust data and analyses. Like the ESG factors which have become ingrained in the management of big super funds, impact investing is establishing itself as a legitimate investment sub-set… with some difficulty. According to Ben Thornley, a managing…

(pictured: Kim Catechis)  Those who stayed the course with emerging markets over the last few bleak years should be feeling fairly chuffed right now as more feint-hearted investors are coming back to the asset class. Martin Currie Investment Management’s Kim Catechis says that order has been restored. The three big questions investors have, the Edinburgh-based…

(pictured: Seth Merrin) Australian fund managers better get ready: MIFID II is likely to have an impact. Even if it doesn’t directly, managers’ super fund clients will be wanting to reap the benefits of the regulation’s requirements that separate the payment for research from the payment for investment transactions. It has been a long time…

(pictured: Matt Malloy) One of the few pockets of growth for institutional fund managers over the last few years has been in the insurance market. Big insurance companies are increasingly outsourcing part or all of their investment management. According to Neuberger Berman, one of the biggest managers with a specialist offering for insurance companies, only about…

(pictured: Rod Sims) Analysis by Greg Bright It’s not just the Link Group’s board and management that are displeased at the ACCC interim view on the proposed Pillar purchase, announced last Thursday. The NSW Government, too, along with Pillar staff, may well be the biggest losers. The final date for bids has been pushed back a…

(pictured: Martin Gilbert) by Greg Bright In these days of increasing variety in investment structures, from traditional LICs to listed investment trusts, to ETFs to SMAs and IMAs, to mFunds and, most recently, to exchange quoted managed funds, it’s the traditional – the LIC – which investors and managers alike still tend to favour. For some…

There are lots of theories about the best way to manage money but one of the most enduring is to adopt long-term thematic bets resulting in idiosyncratic concentrated portfolios. Enter Guardian Capital to the Australian market. Guardian has become a client of third-party marketer Allen Partners and has committed to offering its style of investing,…

(pictured: Jack Inglis) Hedge funds don’t rate highly in the court of public opinion, said Jack Inglis as he opened the annual AIMA Forum in Sydney. And their image is not helped by the media. But the truth about what hedge funds can deliver is far more nuanced than that. Inglis provided a warts-and-all look at…

(pictured: Tom Garcia)  The big topic of “capital stewardship”, as a kind-of overlay for responsible investing and ESG that have been embraced by super funds and other fiduciaries, was a key theme at last week’s AIST Australian Superannuation Investment annual conference in Cairns. Tom Garcia, AIST chief executive, said the 430 capped-attendance to what is…

The investment world loves its acronyms, even though, as the old gag goes, we should try to avoid TLAs (three-letter acronyms). Here’s a new one: the MAC, which stands for multi-asset credit. It’s a potential new path in the search for yield. A client research note from global manager Eaton Vance Investment Managers – ‘Accessing…