Archives for 2019

With more investors increasing allocations to private equity and other alternative asset classes, largely at the expense of traditional hedge fund offerings, alternative fund managers across Australia and the Asia-Pacific are examining their strategic priorities and focusing on how to develop products and prepare their business for a rapidly evolving future. Antoinette Elias, EY’s Oceania… [Read More…]

The fast-growing Auckland fund administration business, MMC, has hired a new chief executive officer amid a senior level restructure that will see a co-founder step down from day-to-day duties. Under the staff changes revealed to clients last week, Vedran Babic, currently Fisher Funds chief operating officer, will assume the role from incumbent, Tom Reiher, next… [Read More…]

A flock of US private equity firms is circling the AMP NZ wealth unit including two businesses with strong local links, Australian press reported last month. According to The Australian, both TA Associates and Blackstone are likely bidders for the AMP NZ business, which allegedly comes with a full-freight sticker price of $600 million. TA… [Read More…]

The Financial Markets Authority (FMA) ticked off more than 20 applications in week one of the advice transitional licensing process. According to a FMA spokesperson, as at last Friday the regulator had received 23 applications for financial advice transitional licences with a couple already approved under the automated sign-up system. “Everything has gone smoothly with… [Read More…]

Simplicity would be able to divert a maximum of about $45 million of KiwiSaver and investment funds to a planned new home loan program based on its recently-released asset allocation model. According to the Simplicity website, the manager will establish a new vehicle to house the loans – the First Home Mortgage Fund (FHMF) –… [Read More…]

Fisher Funds hauled in a total crowd of more than 2,000 punters during its November national tour: a good catch by NZ measures. But the impressive turn-out for a fund manager slide-show may have been underwritten by fear rather than fortune-seeking. Fisher chief investment officer, Frank Jasper, said the mood among the 2019 crowds was… [Read More…]

FNZ’s A$260 million takeover of rival financial software firm GBST has hit a snag as the UK competition watchdog investigates the tie-up. The Edinburgh-headquartered FNZ purchased the ASX-listed GBST in July following a sinking-lid bidding process that knocked the price down to A$3.85 per share from a starting offer of A$4. While the deal settled… [Read More…]

RBC Investor & Treasury Services is to end its 18-year involvement in the Australian asset servicing market, having reached a memorandum of understanding with Citi Australia to allow for the novation of its fund manager clients. Several big RBC clients have already signed non-disclosure agreements to commence negotiations with the new provider. The deal is… [Read More…]

The drift to index funds continued apace among self-directed retail investors, new data from InvestNow has revealed. During the six months ending September 30, the proportion of self-described passive-only investors on the direct-to-consumer platform jumped from 35 per cent to 43 per cent. At the same time, the percentage of active-only investors – almost equal… [Read More…]

MFS Investment Management has launched an Australian-domiciled trust for the wholesale (planners) and institutional markets called the ‘Global Opportunistic Fixed Income Trust’. The new fund came about because of requests from its first big client, Findex, for such an offering. The trust, which mirrors a strategy through a UCITs structure available to only certain investors,… [Read More…]