Weekly briefs

BT sale update, Fund manager of the year changes, AdviserLink sale, Ord's new fund, Auckland industrial yields firm.

Monday, June 7th 1999, 12:00AM

Deutsche Bank is going back to the drawing board after its bungled attempts to sell BT Funds Management's Australasian businesses.
The German-based bank, which gained control of BT globally on Friday, is expected to look at new ways of selling the business.
In the meantime it is to continue running BT separately.
As part of the rethink Deutsche has created a joint planning committee, which includes BT executives Rob Ferguson and Ian Martin, to look at strategic options for the business.

This is seen by observers as an important step towards breaking down the tensions between the two organisations.
Last week's sale failure has been attributed to, amongst other things price, and the likelihood that BT staff, unhappy with the choice of suitor, would leave the firm.
Now that Deutsche has completed its takeover of BT, it is to replace the BT brand name in everything except US private banking and some trust activities.

New awards format
IPAC Securities has changed the format of its fund manager of the year awards to make them more understandable to the public, and more transparent.
The main changes relate to how each sector will be judged. This year sector nominees will be judged largely on quantitative factors, ie: past performance.
The overall award will continue to use the qualitative framework IPAC has used for judging since 1992.
Good Returns will provide a full report on the changes later in the week.... stay tuned!

AdviserLink sale
Morningstar expects to have quit its investment in education provider AdviserLink within the next couple of months.
Morningstar has, for some time now, been selling all its businesses that are not directly related to research. AdviserLink is the last of these businesses to be sold.
"People like the fact that Graham Rich is getting his fingers out of 101 pies and Morningstar is more focussed on research," Morningstar managing director Graham Rich says.
He says there is no urgency to sell the business and the process is "rolling along reasonably well."

Ord's new capital guaranteed fund
Ord Minnett has launched the latest series of its popular OM-IP capital guaranteed investment funds.
The OM-IP Strategic investment, like the others before has a core goes into a diversified London-based trading fund, the second part of the investment goes into other, complementary, international funds.
Underlying these two elements of the portfolio is a capital guarantee from Westpac which ensures investors receive a minimum of A$1.00 for each share they hold at maturity (June 30, 2008).

Firm Auckland industrial yields
Property firm Bayleys is forecasting continued strong demand for quality Auckland industrial property due to a short supply of stock.
It says the median yield for industrial property for the three months to March 31 has been 11.1 per cent and the minimum yield in that period was 9.5 per cent.
"The median yield is expected to remain close to 11 per cent while the minimum yield should firm to around 9.25 per cent over the next 12 months," the firm says.
Despite the 90 day bill rate sitting at 4.5 per cent and low interest rates Bayleys aren't expecting yields to fall as the soundness of the sector, and its growth expectations.

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