Three leading investment experts have called for the debate over how to classify growth and defensive assets to be abandoned, following an exchange of views in Investment Magazine. Over the past 10 days IM has published views from PwC and Sam Sicilia, chief investment officer of HOSTPLUS on the issue. PwC highlighted how differing interpretations … Read more
REST has lauded the contribution of unhedged international equities to its 9.47 per cent return over the past year for its MySuper Super Core Strategy fund. Damian Hill, chief executive officer of REST Industry Super, said international equities is the fund’s largest weighting and was the strongest performer over the past year. “The depreciation of … Read more
The debate on how asset classes are categorised as growth and defensive has arisen again. I can recall debating this many times since superannuation performance surveys began to achieve prominence. The matter is deemed important because it enables super funds to categorise their default option into the central balanced (61 – 80) category and thereby … Read more
The name smart beta originates from Towers Watson and for Tim Unger head of advisory portfolio management at the firm, its key purpose and use by investors is to side step certain expensive fund management products. “It’s enabled investors to substantially reduce the costs of accessing strategies that were largely beta like in nature, but … Read more
The Australian Council of Superannuation Investors (ACSI) has praised the 35 companies on the ASX 200 whose boards comprise of at least 30 per cent women. ACSI is working closely with the Australian chapter of the 30% Club to raise the number of women on boards as part of a revolution in the governance structure … Read more
Sam Sicilia, chief investment officer of HOSTPLUS, has called for a revamp in the way balanced funds classify defensive and growth assets, after the fund’s definitions were called into question in a PwC report. Sicilia said the definitions should be updated to account for the contemporary asset allocations where many funds allocate to unlisted assets. … Read more
Maree O’Halloran was awarded the 2015 AIST trustee of the year award along with Bob Henricks of Energy Super. She stepped down from the HESTA board on June 30 after she left her role as director of the Welfare Right Centre, NSW, which is affiliated to Australian Council of Social Service (ACOSS) a nominating employer for the HESTA … Read more
Investors and academics agree that political developments in Greece are important because they may shape how financial markets will respond to future political situations in the Eurozone. But according to Olivier Rousseau, the executive director of the FFR, the French pension reserve fund, there is more hype outside of the Eurozone on the implications of … Read more
HOSTPLUS is to allow other super funds and self-managed super funds (SMSFs) to invest in its recently launched IFM – Australian Infrastructure option. The $18 billion superfund has recently transitioned to a pooled superannuation trust (PTS) structure which will allow others to invest in its direct investment option (DIO) platform. David Elia, chief executive at … Read more
Remember the Pony Express? It linked the American West, town by town, horse by horse. Well, the Pony Express went bust on 26 October 1861, just two days after the telegraph opened up U.S. communications from coast to coast. Speaking to a group of Australian superannuation representatives in New York last month, Brett King – … Read more
John Pearce has taken the brave step of revealing the investments he got wrong over the last year in his role as chief investment of UniSuper. The fund has an overweight bet on many high yielding Australian shares and while this paid off for Telstra and ASX it has produced an 18 per cent loss … Read more
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