News round-up

Lipper award for Tyndall manager; Unlisted stays with M-co, announces first TQ; Mercer launches research boutiques; Macquarie posts 58% profit drop

Monday, May 4th 2009, 5:47AM

Lipper award for Tyndall manager

New York-based Epoch Investment Partners has won the Lipper Fund Award for its Shareholder Yield Fund.

Total net assets of the fund are $249.2 million, as at 31 March 2009.

The company is one of Tyndall’s managers for its new Multi Manager global equities product.

Unlisted stays with M-co, announces first TQ

Despite the NXZ announcing it is purchasing the energy and related assets of M-co, the Marketplace Company, the Unlisted assets are not included in the transaction.

M-co is the 50% owner and system and support provider for Efficient Market Services, the operator of Unlisted.

NZX had originally expressed interest in the Unlisted assets, but after Unlisted directors discussed the proposal with the NZX, it was decided there were too many uncertainties and potential barriers to achieving a successful transaction.

The Unlisted assets will remain owned by M-co for the foreseeable future.

The company has also announced the arrival of its first-ever Temporary Quotation (TQ) issuer, Richina Pacific.

The service provides Richina Pacific shareholders with a secondary trading mechanism for a limited time, at this stage likely to be until December 31.

The concept is “based on the idea that our web-based trading platform is particularly adaptable and is able to be configured to provide a trading service that is customised for individual companies,” Unlisted manager Bruce Cossill says.

Companies using the TQ service will have a small blue tag denoting their TQ status beside their stock code in the Unlisted quote sheet.

Mercer launches research boutiques

Mercer has created global asset class research boutiques within its investment consulting business.

The new boutiques will build on Mercer’s long-existing manager research structure and will initially cover fixed income, equity, bond, real estate and alternative assets.

The move will serve larger funds whose complex strategies require a high level of detailed knowledge, but the added resource will also benefit Mercer’s broader client base.

“With our large clients, the real competition is increasingly from specialist research firms who put all their resources into researching single asset classes,” global head of Mercer’s investment consulting business Andrew Kirton says.

“By creating our own specialist teams we are taking our global manager research to the next level and will be able to compete with specialist boutiques, as well as provide our larger clients with a more comprehensive service.”

Macquarie posts 58% profit drop

Macquarie Group posted a 52% drop in full-year earnings after taking A$2.5 billion of writedowns.

The profit drop snaps almost a decade of earnings growth as Macquarie followed a model of acquiring assets, pooling them into funds, taking them public and reaping management fees. A slump in asset prices spurred the writedowns. [read more]

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