Australian funds managers have been among the most willing in the world to reduce their trading volumes through full-service brokers in preference for alternative trading systems (ATSs) such as Liquidnet, according to Seth Merrin, CEO of the block-trading broker which transacted $200 million in the three weeks after launching here on February 20. Merrin said … Read more
The current market environment is a good one for funds to be able to increase the revenue they generate by securities lending. It follows that it’s also a time where the lending program is subject to greater risk. LOUNARDA DAVID, principal and regional director of Mercer Sentinel – Asia Pacific, presents a guide for trustees … Read more
Private equity investing has been around for a long time and will continue to be around notwithstanding short-term gyrations of over-pricing, over-leveraging and credit shortages. But that doesn’t mean it won’t change. GREG BRIGHT spoke with two of the world’s most influential private equity middlemen, who happened to be in Australia at the same time … Read more
Markets fall. Heads roll, salaries and bonuses are slashed, businesses fold. Managers are under the spotlight more then ever, but there is a personal toll that is not often talked about. CATHERINE JAMES reports. When David Bowie and Freddie Mercury sang a duet about stress, they said it splits families in two, and puts people … Read more
Like all good conferences, last month’s CMSF 2008 conference raised some weighty issues, dissected them well, prompted debate and provided no real answers. The theme, ‘Shaping the Nation for the Future’, is arguably the most important and ambitious of any superannuation conference in memory. What is now needed is open discussion which goes back to … Read more
Hedge funds — facing forced margin calls and investment redemptions — are selling off wide swaths of their private equity-type investments in search of cold hard cash. And private equity firms have been only too happy to scoop them up. Hedge funds’ private equity portfolios are the result of a convergence of private equity and … Read more
Admitting you are an actuary has probably never been a great conversation-starter at dinner parties, and the profession’s preoccupation with death and mortality tables doesn’t help. Visiting Australia for the FEAL Fund Executives Forum last month, one of Russell Investment Group’s most senior human abacuses, director of strategic advice Don Ezra, called for a name … Read more
The associate professor of finance at UNSW, David Gallagher, has been doing a major study of performance leakage among Australian funds managers due to tax-unawareness. Gallagher applied for a Federal Government grant to support his work. Under the question on the form which asked about how the applicant’s project would advance the national interest, Gallagher … Read more
Aberdeen Asset Management Australia’s boss, Charlie Macrae, has left us for London but he should have considered returning home if results of a competition run by Foreign Direct Investment magazine are anything to go by. While Frank ‘Positioning for Growth’ Cicutto famously dismissed it as having “been in permanent recession for 200 years”, Scotland has … Read more
Behavioural finance, the examination of how willpower, concern for other people, limits on calculating ability, and biology influence economic behaviour is now well accepted in institutional investing. But the latest development in behavioural finance – neuroeconomics, which looks at how the study of the brain fits within this – is taking experimental economics to a … Read more
Unbalanced got a press release from the Commonwealth Bank last month, informing us it would henceforth offer customers the choice of stopping hard-copy statements and receiving electronic records exclusively. We were told that if Which Bank laid out one year’s worth of customer statements end to end, the 175 million sheets of paper would stretch … Read more
In the second of a series of four roundtables on mental health and superannuation, the industry participants and mental health experts discussed the major problem of schizophrenia, the results of interventionist programs in mental health problems and the issues associated with death and total and permanent disability insurance. The roundtables have been sponsored by CommInsure … Read more
The investment intelligence behind Australia’s largest asset owners and their teams
In-depth interviews with leaders, experts and visionaries in the institutional investment community
Updates on the latest industry policy developments and regulation
The challenges and innovations of custody, technology and operational due diligence
Investment Magazine provides in-depth, monthly analysis of trends and developments for all the businesses in which superannuation funds engage‚ including asset allocation, investment manager selection, custody and fund accounting, member administration, group insurance and compliance.
We acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of this land upon which Conexus Financial sits, the Cadigal of the Eora Nation. We recognise their continuing connection and unique cultural and spiritual relationships to the land, waters and community. We pay our deepest respects to them and their culture, and to Elders both past and present.
