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(pictured: Rob Arnott)  Market conditions are such that, if there are lessons from the tech bubble period of 1998-99, investors should be cautiously rotating out of growth stocks, bonds and most developed markets in favour of value stocks, emerging markets, and real assets, according to Rob Arnott. The renowned value investor and founder of Research…

(pictured: Peter Alexander)  No Australian firms made it into the top 25 foreign asset managers making headway in mainland China, according to the latest rankings by Shanghai-based research firm Z-Ben Advisors. While big global firms tended to dominate, the report includes some surprises. A number of regional Asia firms scored higher than their total assets…

(pictured: Peter Brook and Paul Brody) By Trevor Dixon* Pillar Administration may be in the throes of being sold by the NSW Government, but that hasn’t stopped it from seeking to take advantage of what EY has described as the single-biggest technological breakthrough in transaction processing in 50 years. Eschewing the consultants’ more politically correct term…

(pictured: Guy Cameron) Investors are reigning in their exposure to high-yield bonds, according to Cameron Hume director Guy Cameron. But they don’t seem to be going out the risk curve in other areas of fixed income. Cameron Hume is an Edinburgh-based fixed income boutique set up in 2013 offering highly tailored portfolios taking positions in rates,…

(pictured: Andrea West) An array of industry heavyweights will attend the Chant West Super Fund Awards being held at Sydney’s Ivy Ballroom on May 4. The black-tie dinner will be directed this year by outgoing ASFA chief executive, Pauline Vamos. Andrea West, Chant West director, confirmed last week that all tickets had been sold to the…

(pictured: Anthony Quirk) Milford Asset Management has been formally removed from the New Zealand Superannuation Fund (NZS) roster in what has been billed as an amicable divorce. The news comes almost a year to the day since NZS suspended the NZ$281 million Milford NZ equities mandate in the wake of the Financial Markets Authority (FMA) investigation…

Russell Investments has cooked up a new hybrid model designed to burn-off carbon from global equities portfolios without contaminating underlying risk profiles. In a paper published last month – request paper here Russell laid out a proposal to help institutional equity investors comply with the United Nation-backed Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) September 2014 Montréal Carbon…

NSW Treasury Corporation, the largest not-for-profit fund in NSW and third-largest in Australia, has appointed Mercer Sentinel to advise on its securities servicing arrangements. It is arguably the biggest such tender ever in Australia. The $80 billion fund represents the backoffice amalgam for the old T-Corp, the former NSW Workcover insurance fund and the NSW…

(pictured: Peter Higgs) Tactical Global Management, the Australian-owned currency and global macro manager, which pioneered tactical asset allocation in the 1990s, has appointed a chief executive alongside executive chair Peter Higgs and is looking to redouble its marketing effort in macro-alpha strategies. Higgs, visiting Australia from his London base last week, said the firm, which has…

(pictured: David Orford and Stephen Mackley)  Financial Synergy has signed its largest-ever contract – a deal with Statewide Super – in what is also believed to be the super fund industry’s first ‘software as a managed service’ contract, for its Acurity admin system. According to Stephen Mackley, the system company’s chief executive, the deal is…

(pictured: Ron Bird) Target-date funds, which proved popular in the US in recent years and are still being promoted in Australia, with mixed success, were roundly criticised by academics and some funds management practitioners at last week’s workshop organized by the Paul Woolley Centre at the University of Technology, Sydney. Professor Ron Bird, the former fund…

(pictured: Daniel Sheard) There is an increasing disconnect between the strategies adopted by the wealth management industry, and its clients, and those of the institutional part of the industry. Absolute returns strategies are a case in point, a roundtable of wealth management researchers and advisors was told last week. Institutional investors have, in the past few…