Active tax management can be used to enhance after-tax returns of indexed Australian and international equity portfolios for superannuation funds. The systematic and prudent implementation of tactics such as capital-gains/loss management and holding-period management can add real after-tax value. Simulations and back tests carried out by Parametric consistently demonstrate added value in the range of […]
Omega Global Investors, a fixed-income asset manager, has won a $170-million mandate from Local Government Super to invest in sustainable assets. The $6-billion superannuation fund and Melbourne-based Omega have developed a strategy over nine months to make bond investments along environmental, social and governance lines that seek to reinforce the United Nations-backed Principals for Responsible […]
“Balmain boys don’t cry,” former New South Wales Premier Neville Wran once famously remarked. Commercial real-estate-debt manager Balmain Funds, which started in the inner-west Sydney suburb in 1979, is not tearfully pleading for $500 million from superannuation funds. Its planned five-year closed-end fund will lend money to industrial, retail and commercial property investor and developers […]
In 1990 Don Williams’ father died. Williams, then a soft-commodities analyst at AMP, was suddenly thrust into the role of asset manager for his recently widowed mother who inherited 5000 acres of property, the majority of which was planted with cotton. The Wee Waa native sold land and machinery to pay off debt, leased other […]
Some years ago Brigitte Smith was in Idaho with a US Army general. They were trying to clean up a toxic waste site. “A teaspoon of this stuff will kill you,” the general told Smith as she sought samples of toxic waste. “Be careful.” Smith, the co-founder of GBS Venture Partners, is now used to […]
Torben Munch, chief operating officer of Danish investment-management software company SimCorp, likes to tell a story about his firm’s relationship with Lehman Brothers. The Wall Street firm was a SimCorp client when it collapsed in September 2008. Munch found Lehman’s collapse had created confusion and concern as asset managers and brokers scrambled to find out […]
Doug Burton has opened an office for Memphis-based Southeastern Asset Management in Sydney. The $31 billion asset manager has one New Zealand and two Australian customers who have given $1.4 billion to Southeastern. The firm typically buys stocks that trade at a 40 per cent discount to their intrinsic worth, often taking stakes of as […]