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China’s slowdown has driven a region-wide decline in exports and Asian underperformance compared with global markets, according to the latest Russell Asia Market Commentary. The report notes that Asia ex-Japan has underperformed in Russell’s Global Developed index over the last 12 months. “Concerns on China’s slowdown and the impact of the economic downturn on Asia’s…

@cap: Christina Liosis Telstra Super, Australia’s largest remaining corporate fund, with more than $US 11 billion under management, has become the latest to introduce a new investment platform targeting members with high account balances. Like AustralianSuper early this year, Telstra has selected the combination of systems provider FNZ and broker UBS for the new platform…

A proposal by the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority for large super funds to disclose all of their holdings, even those requiring a “look through” their units in trusts, has raised several concerns by custodians on behalf of their clients. While not being opposed to the proposal’s aim of greater transparency, in line with what is…

A study by two academics from the University of Verona, who looked at four years of information on sovereign wealth funds, have concluded that these institutional investors behave differently, often for political reasons, but only in the short term. In the medium-to-long term, SWFs invest in much the same way as the big pension funds…

@cap: Matt Christensen Evidence is mounting that ESG factors are positively correlated with investment returns and, perhaps more surprisingly, it is not just at the stock selection level. Sovereign bonds are also impacted by ESG factors at the country level. New evidence is being presented by AXA Investment Managers throughout the region, as the diversified…

Pension funds and other institutional investors are slow to adopt new asset allocation strategies even though a clear majority fear another ‘tail risk’ event will occur in the next 12 months. A survey of 310 large European and US-based investors, commissioned by State Street Global Advisors and conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit, found that…

‘Big data’ sounds like another self-serving term from the IT department in their life-long quest for more funding. But, dig deeper and it’s worthwhile for even the luddites amongst us to consider the possibilities from the latest major technological trend. JP Morgan Worldwide Securities Services, which holds an annual “technology summit”, discussed the topic of…

Asia Pacific is not an homogenous marketplace, with significant regulatory, cultural and structural differences between countries for institutional investors at an operational or transaction level. Steps have been taken in many countries in recent years to alleviate the problems and move to a more level playing field. At the same time, some markets, notably China,…