The yet-to-be-fully-formed FirstCape has emerged as a potential buyer of a stake in Fisher Funds, according to press across the Tasman. National news publication, The Australian, reported earlier this month that the “newly merged JB Were and Jarden wealth manager backed by Pacific Equity Partners [PEP] is understood to have thrown its hat in the... [Read More ..read more

Louise Unger is set to join the Financial Markets Authority (FMA) in June as permanent replacement for Paul Gregory, former executive director response and enforcement. Gregory resigned last December to take up a newly created role as head of investment partnerships for the ANZ NZ funds management shop. FMA general counsel and head of evaluation... [Read More ..read more

Heathcote Investment Partners founder, Clayton Coplestone, puts a modern perspective on portfolio construction for NZ financial advisers…   The art of creating truly personalised investment portfolios transcends mere paint-by-numbers asset allocation or join-the-dots product placement. Instead, portfolio construction is a highly skilled craft that demands financial advisers capture the essence of individual client preferences while... [Read More ..read more

Link Fund Solutions has been slammed one last time by the UK regulator for its part in the 2019 Woodford Equity Income Fund (WEIF) debacle that seriously harmed late-exiting investors from the liquidity-compromised vehicle. The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) says in its final report on the Woodford affair published mid-April that only a parent company-funded... [Read More ..read more

The Bank of International Settlements (BIS) laid out an ambitious moon-shot program to rocket the global financial system into unification and beyond. In a new paper published last week, the BIS proposes a worldwide reboot of finance built “on ecosystems interconnected with each other – much like the internet”. Unavoidably dubbed the ‘Finternet’ by report... [Read More ..read more

The lag is over. Most economies should, theoretically, now be feeling the full force of high interest rates that first lurched into a new rising cycle late in 2021. Nik Persic, Bentham Asset Management deputy chief investment officer, said the impact of interest rate hikes typically take 12-18 months to flow from the initial monetary... [Read More ..read more

Emerging markets (EM) have offered fertile ground for factor-based strategies, according to new data from specialist index firm, Scientific Beta. The Scientific Beta analysis shows an EM index blending six “well-established equity factors” outperformed a cap-weighted counterpart by an annualised 3.4 per cent since June 2002 and more than 7 per cent for the one-... [Read More ..read more

Good investing requires real sacrifices, according to Oaktree’s Howard Marks, but you can’t expect to be compensated just for making them. Running to a fairly abbreviated four pages, Howard Marks’ latest memo deals with the “indispensability of risk” – and why investors don’t like taking it. It stems from his perusal of an article in... [Read More ..read more

Matthew Arnold, Russell Investments NZ director, has left the business after almost five years with the multi-manager and consulting firm. Arnold joined Russell in 2019 from State Street Singapore, where he led the exchange-traded fund arm, replacing Alister van der Maas as NZ country head two years later. The Russell Australasian division saw a leadership... [Read More ..read more

Challenger investment platform, Flint Wealth, has reverted to a single shareholder with the exit of Harbour Asset Management and Trustees Executors (TE) from the company’s register. Harbour and TE both took about a third each of Flint (via holding entity, Formosa Wealth) late in 2019 with Australian firm, ResearchIP, owning the remainder. Both Harbour and... [Read More ..read more