Uncategorized

(Pictured: Brian Gaynor)  Research houses are holding fire on Milford Asset Management following the New Zealand Superannuation Fund (NZS) decision to suspend its local equities mandate early this month. In the wake of the NZS move, which saw it temporarily re-house the NZ$281 million Milford mandate internally, Australian-based researcher Morningstar said its ratings of the…

(Pictured: Randal Williams) Big Chinese investors, such as the clients of the Sino-global law firm of King & Wood Mallesons (KWM), are diversifying their Australian investments away from resources and into new growth areas, according to a symposium organised by La Trobe Financial last week in Shanghai and Beijing. Those new growth areas for Chinese investments…

(Pictured: Takahiro Mitani) by Penny Pryor The Japan Government Pension Investment Fund (GPIF), the largest pension fund in the world at 137 trillion yen as at December 2014 ($1.4 trillion) has begun the process of investing more in equities and international bonds, away from Japanese Government Bonds, with the appointment of transition managers earlier this month….

(Pictured: Charles Wu) by Greg Bright Media Super has lost its last professional investment manager, Charles Wu, and has advertised for a replacement. The troubled fund, which is known to have been canvassing merger possibilities, last year made its CIO position, then held by Dr Jon Glass, redundant. Wu, a former asset consultant at Mercer, was…

(Pictured: Ian Dunbar) Sophisticated investors aged 60 and over are among the fastest growing adopters of ‘robo’ advice globally and Australia’s self-managed superannuation fund market will be the next frontier for automated advice of various types, according to a report by financial services consultancy FinDigital and robo advice newcomer Ignition Wealth. The ‘2015 Automated Investment Advisors…

(Pictured: Stephen Karrasch) by Greg Bright Findex Group, which now has $15 billion under management and administration from the retail sector, has recruited two big names to oversee its investments, following the insourcing of advice and admin from Philo Capital. Philo’s Stephen Karrasch has landed at Aurora Funds as the new head of distribution. It’s an…

(Pictured: David Eiswert) David Eiswert makes his living by asking the question of himself and his fellow portfolio managers at T. Rowe Price: ‘will what has made an investment a good one in the past continue to make it so in the future?’ When he and his colleagues ask the same question at a macro level,…

(Pictured: Lynelle Briggs) John Coombs has retired from the board of Maritime Super after 20 years with the fund. The former boss of the Maritime Union of Australia, who famously defied the Government by refusing to let radioactive waste cross the docks, is being replaced by Lynelle Briggs, a former chief executive of Medicare. Briggs, a…

(Pictured: David Adiseshan) David Adiseshan’s Southern Cross Financial Advisers is co-hosting a symposium on the US Venture Capital market and its opportunities for Australian investors with the US Consulate General in Sydney and Melbourne, April 21 and 22. Invitees are mainly super funds and family offices. Southern Cross is a division of the financial planning group…

(Pictured: Adrian Stewart) by Greg Bright PIMCO will be rolling out several new fixed income strategies to the retail market, following its decision announced last week to insource retail distribution back from Equity Trustees (EQT), its long-time partner. The world’s biggest bond manager has also strengthened its institutional distribution team. Adrian Stewart, Australian country head, said…

(Pictured: Danielle Press) by Patrick Liddy Winston Churchill stated that “Meeting Franklin Roosevelt was like opening your first bottle of champagne; knowing him was like drinking it.” You meet people like that in business occasionally. They show different thinking in their industries and are able to apply this to complex issues. It even happens, from time…

(Pictured: Tim Hodgson) by Greg Bright The Towers Watson-sponsored Thinking Ahead Institute, launched last year and currently supported by 30 fiduciary investors and fund management groups, has completed a draft of its first research paper, ambitiously entitled ‘The State of the Industry’. When the final version is published to the industry as a whole this year,…