People moves
Eastspring Investments has appointed Colin Graham as Singapore-based chief investment officer for multi-asset solutions. Reporting to CIO Virginie Maisonneuve, Graham will lead and further develop the multi-asset solutions team. Before joining the firm, he was chief investment officer for multi-asset solutions at BNP Paribas Asset Management in London. Prior to BNPP AM, he was managing director and co-head for global multi-asset strategies and multi-asset client solutions at Blackrock…
Hermes Investment Management has appointed Amit Mehta as London-based director and senior Asia analyst on the emerging markets team. In this newly-created role, Mehta will report to Gary Greenberg, head of emerging markets. Before joining the firm, he worked for a number of firms, including Pimco, Pictet, Insight Investment, Morgan Stanley and KPMG…
AI
Japan’s Government Pension Investment Fund is considering using artificial intelligence for asset management, according to a Cerulli Associates report. It is said to be planning a trial period this year, which is likely to prompt other Japanese institutional investors to follow. This comes on the heels of its appointment of Sony Computer Science Laboratories last November to look into the potential effect of AI on its operations and investment, as well as its asset managers’ business models…
Fund launches
New Zealand’s Blackwell Global is expecting its first fund launch in Hong Kong in June, according to a Hong Kong-based spokeswoman of the firm. The firm, which received its asset management licence this month, is targeting retail investors, as well as professional investors, which include high net worth individuals and institutional investors…
Fund flows
Assets of ETFs listed on the Australian Securities Exchange hit a record A$35.5bn ($27.8bn), reflecting a 44.2% year-on-year growth in market capitalisation, according to a report by Cerulli Associates. Net new inflows into ETFs also set a new record, at A$1.3bn in November. Six new products appeared during the month, bringing the total number of ETFs on the ASX to 222. The compounded annual growth rate of this market since 2004 now stands at 31%, with most of the growth having taken place since 2012…
Net inflows into the hedge fund industry globally totalled $30.3bn 2007, bringing the total industry AUM to a new record high of $3.28trn, according to an Evestment report. Inflows were driven by Asia-focused, especially China-focused products and credit hedge fund strategies…
Surveys
More than half of the 34 private and retail banks and family offices surveyed by Pimco plan to decrease their exposure to US equities and developed market government bonds this year, but are more constructive on Asian and emerging markets equities and debt. In addition, over a third of Asian investors intend to increase their exposure to alternative assets, particularly liquid alternatives, private equity and real estate, long/short equity and long/short credit…
Rising political risks and security tensions rank as the top concern for Singapore asset managers in 2018, according to the Investment Management Association of Singapore (IMAS) annual survey. Political risks and uncertainty featured highly (58.93%) in the IMAS survey, which gathered responses from 55 fund managers in the Lion City. Rising uncertainty in US politics (35.1%) and further increases of US interest rates (42.8%) also ranked high on the list as top concerns for fund managers in 2008…
Regulation
Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission has issued a circular on the standards it expects from firms when they sell fixed-income and structured products. The regulator said it has identified a number of compliance failures during its on-site inspections and investigations of the distribution of complex bonds and structured products…
Enforcement
The SFC has banned Chan Wai Nun, a former investment counsellor at DBS Bank in Hong Kong, from re-entering the industry for six months for transferring client data out of the bank prior to his departure to join another bank. The regulator found that in December 2015, Chan forwarded a list containing personal data of 208 clients from his work email account to his personal email account. In February 2016, Chan forwarded the client list from his personal email account to the personal email account of an ex-colleague who was working for Chan’s new employer at the time and would have been Chan’s supervisor when he joined the bank. Unknown to Chan, the ex-colleague then forwarded the client list to his work email account. The email containing the client data was identified by the new employer during its email surveillance and the origin of the email was traced back to Chan…
