The new owner of AdminPARTNERS, an administration software provider to medium-sized superannuation funds, has increased the vendor’s headcount while also beefing up its systems. Queensland Trustees & Investment (QTI), which bought the software provider last year, has enabled the company to appoint two senior analysts to its business and a managing director to partner company Supernet.
Funds draw blueprint to SuperStream the industry
SuperStream, should it live beyond the Cooper Review, must be taken up and implemented by industry practitioners so the government is not compelled to enforce the concept on its own terms. The essential parts comprising a streamlined backoffice already exist: now administrators need to determine a blueprint to modernise their processes. SIMON MUMME reports.
Asia: realm of remaining private equity FoFs
The world’s largest institutional investors are increasingly building their own home-region private equity programs, but turning to fund-of-funds for the rest of the world particularly when it comes to Asia, says a Hong Kong-based partner of the first fund-of funds to build a product covering that region. Sally Collier, who recently moved to Hong Kong as a partner of Pantheon Private Equity, said the “mega buyout” managers who enjoyed a heyday in 2006-7 often had global presences, large capacity and were relatively accessible for researchers.
ESG is the new black for asset managers
While the jury is still out on whether environment, social and governance factors influence the bottom line, savvy funds managers are sniffing the wind. They’re concluding it is perceptions that count and so ESG issues are becoming the ‘new black’, the new ‘must-have’ in the performance ratings battle. PHILIPPA YELLAND reports.
Fight for the middle ground: mezz debt makes its case
Mezzanine debt is a small slice of most Australian institutional portfolios, but last month in Melbourne the case for that slice growing larger was presented by a selection of the bestperforming mezz debt managers in the US. As MICHAEL BAILEY reports, the world’s economy needs to get capital from somewhere if it’s to get off its knees.
Hard Sell Australia’s plan to export managed funds to Asia
For too long there has been only talk about the rich export potential of Australian funds management. Now, roughly two decades after regional competitors Hong Kong and Singapore built globalised asset management sectors by adopting UCITS standards and slashing tax rates, the Australian government is making its move. It believes an Asia managed funds ‘passport’, designed to make the cross-border trade of funds easier, can strengthen Asia-Pacific markets in ways that UCITS never can while also opening new markets for Australian – and Asian – managers. SIMON MUMME reports. 
