Investment News

Generate leapt above the BNZ scheme in the KiwiSaver size rankings during the December quarter in a stand-out growth spurt that added almost $600 million to the boutique scheme assets. According to the latest Plan for Life (PFL) data, Generate recorded a growth-rate of 9.2 per cent over the final three months of 2024 to… [Read More…]

Life insurer AIA NZ is recruiting for a new head of investments in a role currently held by Matt Mobbs. An AIA spokesperson said Mobbs “has indicated a desire to take on a different challenge, so we are currently recruiting externally for the role”. He joined the insurance firm three years ago as head of… [Read More…]

Chris Douglas, Mapua Wealth principal, takes to the stage next month at the Financial Advice NZ (FANZ) annual conference in Christchurch with a surplus of talking points to spark debate should it flag at the three investment sessions he will be on board for. Market volatility, war, tariffs, climate change and artificial intelligence (AI), to… [Read More…]

Custom index specialist, Scientific Beta, has mooted two potential benchmark-tweaking strategies for diversified investors in times of sky-high equity market concentration. In a recent paper, the institutional index-maker suggests investors could either allocate a certain portion of factor-based portfolios to “mega-cap” companies or reweight stock holdings “to closely align with the market cap benchmark”. Authored… [Read More…]

State Street is tipping “at least three US$100 billion asset managers” to enter the fast-growing Australian exchange-traded fund (ETF) market this year. In its 2025 global round-up on the sector, State Street says the US$150 billion plus Australian ETF will expand “across all investment sectors”. “We also see active ETFs getting a second wind, with… [Read More…]

First Sentier Investors has cancelled a poor-performing responsible-tilted global listed infrastructure strategy in a move that will see the one of the largest and longest-running funds of its kind in NZ renamed and restocked with energy companies. Under the shake-up revealed late in February, long-time First Sentier infrastructure portfolio manager, Trent Koch, has also left… [Read More…]

A couple of ANZ underlying listed real asset managers are set to open portfolio investment entity (PIE) funds just six months after the bank-owned fund house exited the wholesale market. Resolution Capital and Maple-Brown Abbott (MBA) – both Australia-domiciled managers – are on the PIE train with respective listed property and infrastructure funds on track…. [Read More…]

Napier City Council has kicked off its in-development perpetual fund outsourcing process with a search for potential investment manager partners now underway. In registration of interest (ROI) papers filed late in February, the Napier local government is looking to appoint a third-party manager to “construct and manage an investment portfolio” expected to top-out at $50… [Read More…]

The NZ funds management sector topped up by more than $17 billion last year as solid markets and strong flows grew the sector by close to 16 per cent to reach a new record high of $324.5 billion. Since the end of 2018, the managed funds market tracked by Reserve Bank of NZ has grown… [Read More…]

Quantitative investment has a black-box reputation, or a mysterious quality that Investopedia describes as something that “produces useful information without revealing any information about its internal workings”. But the black-box status of the statistically significant investment style is misleading, according to Jan Rohof, Northern Trust Asset Management (NTAM) Asia-Pacific quantitative solutions director – at least… [Read More…]