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NAB Asset Servicing’s 22-year reign as Australia’s largest custodian has come to an end, according to the official market share figures to be published by the Australian Custodial Services Association within the next day or two. The new top of the charts and, for a long time, the largest securities servicing firm in the superannuation…

(pictured: Benjie Fraser) Asia is lifting its game with the adoption of ESG principles, according to JP Morgan Investor Services, as big pension funds and other institutions are starting to widen their brief to embrace a UK-style “stewardship code”. Benjie Fraser, UK-based global pensions executive for investor services at JP Morgan, and regular visitor to Australia…

(pictured: Brian Singer)  The big calls that asset allocators have to make – and for Australian investors that’s often about currency – ultimately come down to geopolitical analysis. And that is, believe it or not, all about ‘Game Theory’. According to Brian Singer, the head of dynamic asset allocation for Chicago-based global manager William Blair,…

Smart beta style exchange-traded products are gaining an increasing share of the global market, a new Morningstar report shows. Apparently, investors are turning away from traditional indices. The Morningstar study says smart beta – or ‘strategic beta’ in the research house’s preferred parlance – ETPs grew at a faster pace than products linked to more…

(pictured: Ed Sippel) Comment by Greg Bright TA Associates, a private equity manager with a penchant for funds management firms, has notched up about US$8 billion in the space following its purchase of the Australian-domiciled funds management business of Goldman Sachs. Why? Coincidentally, Goldmans Australia has about A$8 billion in FUM, over fixed income and Aussie…

(pictured: Robert Abad) Most of the action in investments at the moment is in fixed income, believe it or not, as managers look to offer traditional bond-like risk/return characteristics in the most hostile environment for bonds in history. The way to go for investors is to take the constraints off their managers. Western Asset Management, the…

(pictured: Damian Moloney) Frontier Advisors, thanks to its US associate Segal Rogerscasey, has lifted its research capabilities and reach in the US market with the merger of Segal Rogerscasey and Marco Consulting Group. Frontier formed its ‘Global Investment Research Alliance’ in 2013, with Rogerscasey in the US and LCP in the UK the key members. Frontier…

(pictured: Paul Bouchey) With all the noise around factor investing and its various nom de plumes, such as smart beta and risk premia, the assumption always seems to be that it’s inherently efficient from a transactions perspective. Well, it’s not. In a paper published this month by Parametric Portfolio Associates, which is an after-tax and implementation…

(pictured: Jane Buchan) By Wouter Klijn* Female hedge fund managers are performing equally well as their male peers, but they find it harder to raise money. And the outlook is not good. Jane Buchan, chief executive and co-founder of the US funds-of-hedge funds firm PAAMCO, had always been sceptical about the claim that female fund managers…

(pictured: Amin Rajan) The drift to indexing in the US has accelerated over the last three years with passive products now representing a third of the managed fund market, the ‘Financial Times’ (FT) reported last week. According to the report, new figures supplied by Morningstar show passive funds have seen US market share grow from a…

(pictured: David Deverall) by Greg Bright NSW Treasury Corporation, the $70 billion investment fund managing the State’s largest pool of fiduciary money, has spilled several of its most senior positions, including that of CIO, and appointed a recruitment firm to advise on staffing under a proposed restructure. David Deverall, who became chief executive early this year…

(pictured: Michael Dwyer)  The two companies are for sale – one by the NSW Government and the other by its founder. They are engaged in a big tech-heavy project for a high-profile super fund. But the project has not gone to plan. Oh no, not again. The $55 billion First State Super has been advising…