The steering committee for the merger between Print Super and JUST Super has whittled the new fund’s name down to three possibilities, as it embarks on an asset consulting tender ahead of a June 30 start-date.
The Sydney Morning Herald journalist who will chair the new $3 billion fund, Gerard Noonan, said 400 members of both Print and JUST had been surveyed on a number of proposals including three name options – Communicate Super, Media Super and Multimedia Super. “We need a name that will appeal to as many members as possible. The new fund will have actors, graphic designers, journalists, printers, even the guys making cardboard boxes for Visy,” Noonan said.
Meanwhile Print Super, as the continuing fund in the merger with JUST Super, has called in Rice Warner Actuaries to run a full tender for its asset consulting contract, currently with Mercer Investment Consulting, while a tender for master custody will occur in the second half of 2008.
A new contract with a single asset consultant will be finalised by April, Noonan said, with an early priority for the new advisor being a consolidation of Print and Just’s member-discretionary options (JUST has a ‘pick-your-own-asset-allocation’ facility passively managed by State Street Global Advisors.
This asset consulting tender will be the only one undertaken in advance of the winding-up of JUST and the newly merged fund commencing operation on June 30 – almost exactly a year after the original heads of agreement between Print Super and JUST was signed. As operational details of the new fund continue to be bedded down, it has been confirmed that although current JUST chair Noonan will chair the new merged fund, directors with a Print Super heritage will outnumber those from the JUST side by seven to five.
The JUST chief executive, Mi Thian-De Wind, said that tenders would be initiated for other major service providers as their contracts became due after the merger, but initially Print’s member administrator, Pillar, and master custodian BNP Paribas Securities Services would service the new $3 billion, 110,000 member fund.
Noonan said that Pillar remained under contract “for several more years” but that master custody would undergo a full tender in the second half of 2008. The funds’ respective insurers – Allianz and Hannover Life for Print Super, ING Life for JUST Super, will both transfer arrangements to the new fund but will face a subsequent tender process to find a single insurer, with Noonan expecting much better terms given the scale and bargaining power of the new fund.
