Investment News

Australia’s Perpetual Investments and the NZ Superannuation Fund have joined a group of global investors in an engagement program involving human rights and the use of facial recognition technology. They are the only Australasian members of a group of 50 fiduciary investors which speak for about US$4.5 trillion (A$5.9 trillion) under management. The initiative was… [Read More…]

Clarity Funds Management is opening up the Māori values-based Australasian equities strategy, Tahito, to the retail market. Launched in October 2019 as a wholesale fund under the auspices of Clarity, the first-of-its-kind Tahito has accrued about $5 million under management since inception, according to co-founder and managing director, Temuera Hall, with growing institutional interest. “At… [Read More…]

GMO has released its latest borderline-apocalyptic seven-year forecast for stocks and bonds as it warns clients to “concentrate assets where the bubble ain’t”. GMO’s extraordinarily bearish forecasts predict a negative annual real return over seven years across the majority of both stocks and bonds, with only emerging markets value stocks getting a positive, if slim,… [Read More…]

Despite divergent underlying financial trends, the relative wealth gap between Australia and NZ remains largely unchanged after the first two decades of the 21st century, according to a new Credit Suisse global study. The 12th Credit Suisse Global Wealth Report released last week, shows the relative richness of the two trans-Tasman neighbours as at the… [Read More…]

Mercer NZ has joined the double-digit billionaire fund manager club after scoring $1 billion in mandates during 2021 to date. In a release last week, Mercer says it pushed through the $10 billion threshold as rising client demand coupled with bull markets saw the multi-manager’s funds under management (FUM) soar by 60 per cent over… [Read More…]

Corporate co-operation with the environmental, social and governance (ESG) data specialist unit of S&P is on track to rise up to 30 per cent this year as the thirst for reliable information in the sector surges. Reid Steadman, S&P Dow Jones Indices global ESG head, told a NZ audience – in an event organised by… [Read More…]

Auckland fintech firm, Invsta, has followed up its fund manager tech engagement checklist with another version tuned to the KiwiSaver market. Using the same traffic-light system as per the earlier fund manager offer published in May, the newly released KiwiSaver checklist helps providers rank their current technological status against “24 key functionalities”. The Invsta report… [Read More…]

Trustees Executors (TE) chief, Ryan Bessemer, has called for tighter regulation of the burgeoning investment platform sector. In the just-released Financial Services Council (FSC) ‘Money and you’ survey of the local digital investment scene, Bessemer says platform innovation has been a positive development. However, he says in the report “I do feel very strongly that… [Read More…]

The $6 billion plus Kiwi Wealth has struck a deal with a German index-maker to provide benchmarking services for its global share portfolios, paving the way, too, for a new passive KiwiSaver default fund. Steffan Berridge, Kiwi Wealth quantitative and responsible investments strategist, said the agreement inked with Solactive would also enable the Wellington-headquartered manager… [Read More…]

Milford Asset Management continued its climb up the KiwiSaver rankings with a growth-rate almost four-times the average during the March quarter. New figures from Australian researcher Plan for Life (PFL) show the Milford scheme jumped 13.6 per cent over the three months to March 31 compared to the mean growth-rate of just 3.5 per cent…. [Read More…]