The $12 billion Hour-Glass Investment Facility of the NSW Treasury Corporation (TCorp) will shortly go to tender for its asset consulting contract, currently with Intech.
The chief executive officer of the Hour-Glass Investment Facility, Stephen Knight, said Chant West Financial Services would run the tender. Requests for proposals will be sent to the major advisory consulting houses soon, and he hoped the entire process would take 12 weeks. Intech has been TCorp’s advisor ever since it first established a role for asset consultants a decade ago, and a full tender has never occurred in the interim . Knight said it was “;entirely coincidental”; that the upcoming tender was taking place following Intech’s well-publicised decision to accept no new advisory clients. “;We’d had an asset consulting review pencilled in for this year for quite some time,”; he said. Knight said the value- and defensive-biased nature of TCorp’s portfolios, which have seen it perform relatively well in the recent market downturn, had been a combination of its boards’ risk appetite and Intech’s advice.
There is one investment area where Insignia’s $180 billion super arm has not lost money for the past 17 years, which is what it calls the insurance-related investments. The alternatives strategy is gaining popularity among asset owners due to its diversification benefit, but Insignia’s super and asset management investment chief Dan Farmer warns it is a space where investors can suffer if they “stumble in without doing the homework”.
Darcy SongJanuary 23, 2025
