All of Australia’s state motoring associations have formed a new federation which will absorb the Motor Trades Association of Australia, while two candidates interviewed for the MTAA Super chairmanship, including former NRMA president Nick Whitlam, have so far failed to gain majority board approval.
Tide comes in for 5 Oceans with $80m mandate
A Melbourne-based super fund has awarded an $80 million global equities mandate to Five Oceans Asset Management’s World Fund.
SunSuper has awarded its $160 million-per-year group insurance contract to AIA Australia, but jilted incumbent, Suncorp Life, has shrugged off the end of the 23-year marriage by saying the impact to its overall business will be less than 2 per cent. One merger makes it, another flounders
The Queensland local government funds LGsuper and City Super yesterday confirmed their $5.5 billion marriage, but a separate $8 billion merger which has been discussed for more than a year is still not over the line.
The name remains the same
The name remains the same Back in 2008, everyone’s favourite Gold Coast property investor, MFS Limited, had plenty of reasons to change its name. It was floundering in debt on its way to drowning entirely. But as it turned out, it wasn’t shame which prompted the name-change to Octaviar, but court action by another MFS … Read more
Funds perform but discount fee hype spoils choice
Australian hedge funds (including offshore funds sold in Australia) returned 2.64 per cent in September, taking the year-to-date performance to 2.54 per cent. Fixed income and market-neutral strategies led the pack with returns of 7.83 per cent and 5.09 per cent respectively for the nine months to September 2010. Perpetual unit registry changes key to Sonata
Perpetual Investments had a major technology problem: three separate unit registry applications, increasing costs, and growing dissatisfaction from clients and staff. The first system was based on an unscaleable, proprietary legacy platform called VAX/COBOL/ RDB, which stored about 3 million transaction histories. The second was a Bravura Solutions application supporting Perpetual’s Select multi-manager offering. The third was the underlying platform for all of its other products. In the end, there were more than 260 users of these platforms and 200,000 active accounts, and staff had to be trained to use all three disparate applications.
Australia trails region on same-day affirmation
Australian funds managers have emerged as regional laggards when it comes to affirming trades on the day they are made, a practice which a major study by a central trade matcher, Omgeo, has found to be a pre-requisite for lowering operational risk and increasing settlement efficiency. MICHAEL BAILEY reports.
Put retirement benefits on statements
Retirement benefit projections are set to be on members’ statements within six months, following Provisio’s upgrade to its rapid advice delivery software for clients’ super funds. PHILIPPA YELLAND reports.
