Investment News

Lifetime Retirement Income has put the underlying funds up for review on its freshly acquired employer superannuation master trust. Ralph Stewart, Lifetime founder, said the group had hired consultancy firm, EriksensGlobal, to run a ruler over the investment strategy backing the former Aon employer super platform. “We’ve got an eight-week investment review process underway to… [Read More…]

The $1.8 billion National Provident Fund (NPF) has dumped its small allocation to alternative assets, cutting quantitative manager AQR from the portfolio in January. AQR has disappeared, too, from the menu of the related Government Superannuation Fund (GSF), which is also managed by the Wellington-based Annuitas. According to the just-published NPF annual report, the board… [Read More…]

A new CEO will go part of the way to convincing investors that Magellan can be turned around. But proving to those investors that they need Magellan – not an index – will be harder. No news is usually good news, though Magellan might be the rare exception. Newly-minted CEO David George – formerly of… [Read More…]

A new financial adviser ongoing education service has hit the ground running in NZ as the industry prepares for the imminent full licensing regime. Brian Knight, head of Australian firm Kaplan Professional, said interest in the NZ version of the group’s Ontrack continuing education program had been strong since its official release last week. The… [Read More…]

Blame the unicorn-hunters. Or luck. Just don’t point the finger at central bankers for the recent value-v-growth stock performance trends, according to quantitative investment legend, Cliff Asness. In a paper published last week, the AQR founder says over the long-term “there is very little evidence that the return of the value factor is anything other… [Read More…]

Shame-based investment strategies yoked to simplistic environmental, social and governance (ESG) scoring systems have come under fire in a new report from UK data analytics firm, Util. Patrick Wood Uribe, Util chief, says in the paper that in a “complex global economy, there are few obvious, absolute ‘good’ or ‘bad’ investments”. “Inevitable tradeoffs exist in… [Read More…]

If negative screening worked, Stocks in the sin bin should have lower firm valuations, higher future stock returns, and delist more often. They don’t. While engagement is usually the weapon of choice for institutional investors when it comes to companies in controversial industries like fossil fuels, negative screening still has its fans. The only problem… [Read More…]

Fisher Funds has emerged as the no-surprises winner to take out the approximately $9 billion Kiwi Wealth investment business in a deal destined to cement the Takapuna-based firm as the second-largest fund manager in NZ. It is understood Fisher paid about $310 million for Kiwi Wealth, which has been shopped around by its government-linked owners… [Read More…]

FNZ is scrambling to fix a technical glitch that has disrupted client reporting and trading for advisers using the Consilium platform over the last few weeks. The malfunction followed the recent, long-awaited Consilium switch to the new FNZ One platform, intended to bring NZ clients into line with global investment technology standards. According to multiple… [Read More…]

AMP wealth management NZ has reported a more than 10 per cent year-on-year decline in net profit during the first half of 2022 as falling market share and share market volatility hit revenue. According to the broader AMP group results released last week, the AMP NZ business turned in a net profit after tax of… [Read More…]