Investment News

Trustees Executors (TE) has sold another piece of the business after offloading its custody and fund accounting operations for an undisclosed sum to rival, Apex Group today. The Bermuda-based Apex will add the TE business units – including about 30 people – to its NZ subsidiary (formerly known as MMC) in a further expansion in… [Read More…]

The Financial Markets Authority (FMA) has signalled a shift towards a more ‘streamlined’ regulatory style in line with the new government’s anti-red-tape stance in its latest four-year plan. According to the slightly delayed FMA ‘statement of intent’ (SOI) published last week, the regulator will give more weight to the impact of rules on market participants… [Read More…]

Clarity Funds Management has formed another fund-hosting arrangement as the front-of-house for an Australia-based fixed income strategy. Under the arrangement registered last week, Clarity – part of the Investment Services Group (ISG) conglomerate – will offer a portfolio investment entity (PIE) version of the Daintree Core Income Fund. “The Fund will invest into the Daintree… [Read More…]

Nikko Asset Management has added an underlying manager in its global equities fund-of-funds following a ‘hard close’ of another strategy and a subsequent shake-up of that firm’s investment team. Stuart Williams, Nikko NZ chief, said a JPMorgan-run ‘high conviction’ fund would join the group’s global shares multi-manager line-up after some recent changes in another manager… [Read More…]

Long-time Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) fund head of investment strategy, Tore Hayward, is stepping aside to make way for protégé, Carly Falconer. Hayward has been influential in the local institutional investment world with a pedigree including four years as head of portfolio research at the NZ Superannuation Fund (NZS) before moving to his current ACC… [Read More…]

Jack Regan, ex AMP NZ chief, is suing a national publication across the Tasman over alleged defamatory comments in a 2023 article. Regan, who led the AMP NZ business for 10 years until 2017, lodged court documents last week claiming a report in The Australian in January last year caused him “substantial distress, embarrassment and… [Read More…]

Rising geopolitical tensions mean that diversification’s ‘free lunch’ must come from a new menu if investors are to make it through the meal, the Future Fund says. The relative stability that prevailed from the end of the Cold War to the Global Financial Crisis has seen geopolitics become “underappreciated, underestimated and effectively forgotten about”, the… [Read More…]

Environmental, social and governance (ESG) investment trends have blurred the line between passive and active strategies, according to a new survey of global pension funds. The study by UK-headquartered specialist research firm, Create, found “the choice between actives and passives is not black and white”. “This much is clear from the rise of granularity in… [Read More…]

Asset class correlations look set to remain higher for longer in the higher-for-longer rates environment, a new FTSE Russell study suggests, posing a potential threat to portfolio diversification strategies. The FTSE Russell analysis found a marked “structural break” in asset class return correlations delineating the post-COVID era and the previous two decades when US bonds… [Read More…]

The Financial Advice Code Committee has ruled out mandatory degree-level qualifications for advisers in a consultation paper released last week. Under the proposed Code tweak the status quo of Level 5 qualifications will remain the minimum standard for financial advisers in “designing an investment plan” – an area that had previously been earmarked for an… [Read More…]