Archives for 2019

The NZ Superannuation Fund (NZS) has recovered most of the heavy losses sustained during a horror December for global equities. An NZS spokesperson said the fund has climbed back to about $39 billion by late January after shedding close to $2 billion in the last month of 2018. According to the just-published NZS monthly performance… [Read More…]

Link Group has reached an agreement to sell the newly acquired ‘corporate and private clients’ business of Capita Asset Services, the UK asset servicing company it paid about A$1.5 billion for in mid-2017. The £240 (A$433 million) from the sale will go to paying down debt. The share market liked the news. In a prepared… [Read More…]

Budding NZ medicinal marijuana start-up, Greenfern, has already received interest from institutional investors both here and in Australia as its first crowd-funding round draws to a close, according to one of the firm’s directors, Dan Casey. Casey said large investors including funds, wealthy individuals and an Australian crowd-funding outfit were sounding out Greenfern for further… [Read More…]

Global indexing giant MSCI has rolled out a new factor investment system spanning multiple asset classes. The MSCI Multi-Asset Class Factor Model “helps investors analyze key portfolio exposures across asset classes through an integrated and consistent framework”, the group said in a statement. Factor investing, also known as ‘smart beta’, has ballooned in recent years… [Read More…]

Regulators will pressure NZ life insurers to reduce or remove all sales incentives, including third-party commissions, in the wake of a damning industry review released today. While the joint Financial Markets Authority (FMA) and Reserve Bank of NZ (RBNZ) report falls short of recommending a formal ban or cap on commissions opting instead for the… [Read More…]

The rump AMP NZ business, queued for a potential NZX listing this year, would generate about half the profit of its former self based on current trends, new figures published by the embattled group last week reveal. In a market update, AMP accounts show the firm’s now-sold NZ insurance and legacy book turned a profit… [Read More…]

NZ investment managers, crowdfunders, discretionary investment management service (DIMS) providers et al could be up for some light regulatory relief under a new Financial Markets Authority (FMA) proposal to ditch the current five-year licensing term. As per the original Financial Markets Conduct (FMC) regulations all ‘licensed providers’ – which covers a broad church including fund… [Read More…]

The meteoric ascent of index-investing has yet to seriously distort financial markets and could, by contrast, spark new strategies for active managers, Mercer says. In its thematic outlook for 2019, Mercer says the investor index-rush has not – to date – cancelled out the ‘price discovery’ power of markets or created broader financial system risks…. [Read More…]

Almost since indices were invented, primarily as a form of measurement, their power to influence the behaviour of market participants and therefore the whole market as defined by those indices has been well understood and sometimes criticised, particularly plain vanilla market-cap indices.. But in the past five years this power has considerably weakened, according to… [Read More…]

Nikko Asset Management has joined the growing band of local bond managers shifting to a Bloomberg composite fixed income benchmark, the latest Melville Jessup Weaver (MJW) quarterly investment survey reveals. Last year AMP Capital led the charge to a composite index for NZ fixed income followed closely by Harbour Asset Management. Previously, AMP Capital –… [Read More…]