Investment News

Just five years ago the London-based impact investment boutique, WHEB, boasted about £100 million in its flagship global equities strategy at a time when environmental, social and governance (ESG) was an obscure term circulating at the fringes of fund management. By 2022 the WHEB Sustainability Fund, until recently the manager’s only strategy, had grown more… [Read More…]

Global fund management king-pin, BlackRock, is pursuing plans to democratise corporate governance via a plan to open up proxy voting to individual investors. In his annual letter to the heads of major listed companies last week, BlackRock chief, Larry Fink, says while expanding proxy voting rights to individual fund investors still faces “significant regulatory and… [Read More…]

A group of 10 community trusts have signed up to a new pledge aiming to align the approximately $4 billion sector more explicitly with climate change goals. In an agreement inked last month, the ‘Funders commitment on climate action’ requires signatories to fast-track operational and investment portfolio ‘decarbonisation’ efforts as one of seven broad goals…. [Read More…]

Regulators have eased up on some breach-reporting conditions among a number of tweaks to the proposed implementation of the Financial Markets Infrastructure Act (FMI) released last week. The joint Reserve Bank of NZ (RBNZ) and Financial Markets Authority (FMA) guidelines on the intended FMI regulatory approach back-track on earlier plans to require mandatory publication of… [Read More…]

Government-owned investment house, Kiwi Wealth, is understood to be on the market with at least a couple of potential buyers circling, according to multiple industry sources. The Wellington-headquartered investment firm has grown from about $1.5 billion in 2012 when Kiwibank purchased the-then Gareth Morgan Investments (GMI) to more than $9 billion today. The approximately $6.5… [Read More…]

In another record-breaking run, BlackRock, tipped the scales above US$10 trillion for the first time in 2021 as market performance combined with net flows of US$540 billion. Larry Fink, BlackRock chief, said the 2021 results – released last week – represented “the strongest organic growth in our history, even as our assets under management reached… [Read More…]

More than two years since inception, the new investment platform offered by joint-venture partners Harbour Asset Management, Trustees Executors (TE) and Research IP is set to go live this week. Following a lengthy in-house testing period, the Flint Wealth platform will launch a public ‘beta’ version on Wednesday (January 19) with nine NZ fund managers… [Read More…]

FNZ has offloaded its troublesome Australian financial software subsidiary, GBST, under a sale and part-buyback agreement inked late last year with private equity firm, Anchorage Capital Partners. The deal ends a two-year saga dating back to November 2019 when the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) launched an enquiry into FNZ/GBST tie-up first cemented in… [Read More…]

Mark Jephson, ex Perpetual Guardian chief, has joined Auckland-based specialist firm, Mosaic Financial Services Infrastructure, as partner. Mosaic founding partner, Myles Allan, said Jephson – who led Perpetual Guardian for almost two years ending August 2020 – would “add a complementary layer of expertise” to the consulting business. “His thorough understanding of how the corporate… [Read More…]

The UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has earmarked the index, credit ratings and market trading data sectors for closer scrutiny amid claims of anti-competitive behaviour in the influential – and expensive – service industries. In a statement last week, the FCA confirmed it would launch two investigations this year, starting with a probe “into concerns… [Read More…]