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(Pictured: Niall Quinn) Australian super funds have a right to be worried about the world we are in, says Niall Quinn, a managing director and president of global manager Eaton Vance Investment Managers. But he is not a pessimist. He believes, for instance, the worst will be over within four years. Quinn, who is a fixed…

The introduction of the new Basel III banking liquidity regulations has opened a window of opportunity for financial institutions in Australia to work with their bank providers on innovative strategies and solutions which could benefit both parties, according to Kevin Wong, Director in Client Insights & Solutions, in ANZ Bank’s International and Institutional Banking group….

(Pictured: FionaTrafford-Walker) The three-firm global alliance for information sharing by Frontier Advisors has been expanded to include sharing information and views on business issues. The alliance is to be widened to include Asia and Japan, South America and, eventually, South Africa. Fiona Trafford-Walker, Frontier’s investment director, was in New York recently for what has become a…

(Pictured: James Shanahan) As a rapid adoptor of new technologies, James Shanahan of Avaloq Sourcing Asia Pacific believes, Australia is likely to become increasingly advanced in the interface between fund managers and clients. As such, Australia is a good environment for his firm’s business processing outsourcing expansion. Shanahan, the regional head of M&A for Avaloq, based…

(Pictured: Mark Tinker) AXA Framlington, the active management arm of AXA Investment Management, is building a team in Hong Kong to enable Asian equity funds to be run locally, from around the end of this year. Mark Tinker, who moved from London to Hong Kong with AXA in September 2013, said last week that Asia represented…

(Pictured: Al Clark) Nikko Asset Management will continue to fill out its suite of investment strategies for Australian investors this year, with the expected launch of several new funds, including a new multi-asset strategy later in the year. The senior investment professionals at the former Tyndall Australia are increasingly being leveraged internationally by Nikko, including the…

(Pictured: David Carruthers) David Carruthers, a Mercer principal who is well known for his involvement in establishing the Global Investment Management Database and more recently in other information products, has been made redundant after 19 years with the firm. Carruthers worked on GIMD, which became the dominant manager performance database in the world, with team leader…

(Pictured: Tanya Branwhite) The Future Fund has recruited researcher and strategist Tanya Branwhite from Macquarie Bank as a director in its equities team. The move followed the departure this month of Elspeth Lumsden, who is now pursuing post-graduate academic studies at Melbourne University. Sarah Carne, who is acting head of equities following Lumsden’s departure, said last…

 (Pictured: James McKinlay) James McKinlay has left JANA Investment Advisers to become one of four Sydney-based investment directors at Wellington International Management Co. He will be involved in fixed interest product management. Wellington’s other three investment directors are Aisling Freiheit, who has dual asset allocation and fixed interest specialties, James Crawford, for equities, and Lori Whiting,…

(Pictured: Raewyn Williams) After-tax management and other benefits from using centralized portfolio management (CPM) have been given a shot in the arm with the publication of a paper on the topic by Towers Watson. CPM is one of those things – like optimising cash or reducing FX costs – which is often left in the to-do…

(Pictured: Jack Gray)  by Greg Bright The prevailing wisdom is that bigger is better for super funds, but combined research on the subject which tries to quantify benefits to members is inconclusive. A new research note analyses the conflicting elements of scale in a fund and illustrates how smaller funds can outperform, at least with…

(Pictured: Sam Sicilia) When Citi won its first industry fund securities servicing client, HostPlus, in 2013 that whole sector of the funds management industry sat up and took notice. According to Sam Sicilia, Host’s CIO, not many funds would have made the same decision. It was a bit of a gamble, he admits, but he is…