The debate over whether crediting rates or unit pricing is the better value attribution model for a superannuation fund has clouded a more important question of whose interest the frequency of attribution is made in, according to business systems consultant Askit Consulting. Jules Gribble, director of Askit Consulting, told an audience dominated by industry superannuation … Read more
The internationally-renowned community advocate, Rhonda Galbally, made a piercing observation about us all at last month’s Australian Institute of Superannuation Trustees’ Sydney luncheon discussing retirement adequacy. “The lack of a whopping great inheritance tax shows Australians don’t mind social inequity,” she said. It’s certainly true that older, cashed-up Australians have been doing disproportionately better out … Read more
Cash has come back, shoring up portfolios with liquidity that can be siphoned towards emerging investment opportunities or used to beat bonds by sitting safely in bank bills. SIMON MUMME looks at how some cash managers have either profited or been upended by widespread credit problems. The global liquidity freeze has rattled even the traditionally … Read more
Forget shuffling between equities and bonds. As the underlying causes of market volatility become more complex, so do the tactical asset allocation tools used to manage and exploit it. AMANDA WHITE and SIMON MUMME report. The complexity and unpredictability of recent market movements are being reflected in asset allocation debates throughout the country’s superannuation investment … Read more
The web-enabling and connectivity that arises from service-oriented architecture (SOA) can be a mixed blessing if the underlying software’s processing speed is not fast enough, according to Synchronised Software managing director Rory Wainer. “You install an SOA layer on a system and you are opening up a path that otherwise might not have existed,” Wainer … Read more
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
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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.
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