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Jose Placido, the expansionary chief executive of RBC Investor Services, will leave the firm next month after more than 24 years, to be replaced by two current RBC executives. Tony Johnson, the global head of sales and distribution and Joanna Meager, the global head of client operations, will become co-heads of RBC Investor Services, in…

The specialist operational due diligence adviser Prism Alternative Investments is considering setting up in the Asia Pacific region to both improve its own capabilities around the world and expand its business. Prism’s founder, Lauri Martin, and client relations manager, Heinz Haas, spent the past two weeks in Australia speaking with hedge fund industry participants and…

Funds manager consensus views on 2013 augur well for share markets and sound some caution for bonds, according to the financial adviser licence provider Paragem. In its outlook note for clients last week, Paragem predicts:  Interest rates around the world will remain low not just in 2013 but probably for another couple of years after…

Hedge funds run by women have outperformed those run by men, according to a report by the US professional services firm Rothstein Kass. As reported by ‘Dealbook’, a news service of the NY Times, Rothstein Kass has produced an index which showed that female hedge fund managers had an average return of 8.95 per cent…

Mercer Sentinel has produced a report illustrating how the US Dodd-Frank Act, which became law in 2010, has the potential to “wreak havoc, both operationally and in terms of portfolio construction” for investors outside the US. The Act, which was followed by the similar Market Infrastructure Regulation directive in Europe, demands that over the counter…

Most publishers, certainly most I have met, think the New York Times is the best newspaper in the world. As the BBC is to the airwaves, the NYTimes is to print. When the NYTimes ‘investigates’ something, as with the BBC, it really is an investigation. So, leaving aside the murky middle ground of online where…

Towers Watson has moved further into investment implementation with the proposed acquisition of the UK global multi-manager Oxford Investment Partners (OXIP). The big asset consultant, which has for some time being offering “delegated CIO” services to usually smaller pension funds and other fiduciaries, announced on December 20 that it would acquire its former client OXIP,…

Psychologists offer some proven advice for those looking to keep New Year’s resolutions. That advice could well apply, too, to investors looking to maximize returns this year after some mixed results in the past few years. If you’re serious about your New Year’s resolutions you should do three things: have clear and definable, not vague,…

The CIO of PIMCO, the world’s largest fixed interest manager, which has been one of the big beneficiaries of the flight to ‘safety’ since 2008, is downbeat about prospects for the markets this year. Bill Gross said in a Twitter post last week that he expected both shares and bonds in the US to return…

State Street’s ‘investor confidence index’, which has proved to be a reasonably good portent of things to come since its inception in 2003, ended the year on a positive note, with Asian investors the most optimistic. The global index rose 0.4 points from November’s revised reading of 80.5 to settle at 80.9.  Among North American…

Thanks to APRA, the regulator for Australian super funds, the annual ‘health check’ traditionally performed by asset consultants may be a thing of the past. From next July, funds will be doing regular stress testing using new models developed by their custodians. As part of a raft of new regulations designed to improve prudential standards…

Mercer Investment Consulting has thrown its weight behind the trend for age-based – or ‘target date’ (US) or ‘glide path’ (UK) – default options for pension funds, notwithstanding the limitations of such strategies. The significance of this is that, unlike its big competitor, Russell Investments, Mercer does not have a ‘product’ to push. Target-date funds…