Australian equity investors should look beyond headline concerns about China slowing, with the country’s A and H-share valuations offering attractive opportunities, says Stuart Rae, AllianceBernstein’s Pacific Basin equities chief investment officer. Rae argues that markets have overreacted to fears about a rapid China slowdown, leaving equity valuations significantly cheaper than both their average over time … Read more
Institutional investors around the world have been lobbying for the right to have a say on pay, a right to have an input into the remuneration of the executives in the companies they invest in. In June the UK’s business secretary, Vince Cable, laid out new plans that will give shareholders three-yearly votes on executive … Read more
The asset managers who will succeed in the current low-returns environment are those that can fashion workable post-retirement solutions and have the capability to offer integrated multi-asset solutions, predicts AXA Investment Managers’ Craig Hurt. Hurt, who is the head of the global asset manager’s Australian and New Zealand operations, says that the mandates offering multi-asset-class … Read more
Industry-wide adoption of the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) Managed Funds Service (AMFS) could save up to $215 million a year in transaction costs, according to Rice Warner Actuaries. A Rice Warner report, Managed Funds Transaction Cost Research: Impact of ASX Managed Funds Service, concludes that the service could lead to savings of between 35 … Read more
Staff at the $4.6-billion Equipsuper could start making tactical investment bets through futures contracts by the end of the year. Equipsuper’s seven-person investment team aims to begin making investments in all asset classes by using futures based on major stock and bond market indexes by December. The contracts would enable the fund to place trades … Read more
Scenario analysis can be a useful tool in determining investment strategy, but it is not easy. It certainly involves more than good and bad perturbations around a base case. Excellent scenario analysis requires deep thinking and imagination to create a set of plausible futures. Each scenario does not have to be likely, but if it … Read more
How high is your portfolio’s exposure to potential stranded carbon assets? According to Generation Asset Management, stranded assets are those with a value that would change dramatically, either positively or negatively, under certain scenarios such as a reasonable price on carbon or water. The soon-to-be-introduced Clean Energy Plan will put a price on carbon emissions for … Read more
Growth in the volume of fixed income funds managed by BlackRock in Australia has seen the firm’s Singapore-based head of Asia-Pacific portfolio management, Michael Prljaca, join the manager’s fixed income team based in Sydney. Prljaca will report directly to BlackRock’s head of indexed and enhanced portfolio management, Craig Vardy. BlackRock currently manages about $11 billion … Read more
The private equity division of fund manager Blue Sky Alternative Investments has invested $2 million in Olympian Michael Klim’s company, Milk & Co. The deal will help fund Milk & Co’s expansion through additional executive staff and working capital as the company looks to establish itself as a major global brand for natural and organic … Read more
Falling official interest rates in Australia will dampen individual investors’ appetite for cash term deposits and increase appetite for dividend-paying stocks, listed property and other yielding assets, according to AMP Capital Investors. The Sydney-based fund manager, which oversees about $100 billion in assets, official interest rates to fall from 3.5 per cent to 3 per … Read more
A new way of managing pre-retirees’ investments, dubbed “adaptive” asset allocation, may hold the key to solving Australia’s looming retirement-income problem, according to the managing director of Russell Investments, Chris Corneil. Explaining the formation of a new multi-disciplinary team within Russell, Corneil says the traditional set-and-forget approach to asset allocation is not only outdated, but … Read more
Industry Funds Management (IFM), which oversees $34.7 billion in assets, will permanently lower investment fees for all of its products from September. IFM, Australia’s ninth-largest fund manager by assets, will lower the management expense ratios (MERs) that all of its investors pay as increasing funds under management and positive returns buoy profits and help drive … Read more
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