InvestorDaily

InvestorDaily

AFR

Yarra Capital Management will acquire all of Nikko Asset Management in Australia to become a $20 billion investment manager, and Nikko will in turn take a 20 per cent stake in the Australian manager in a deal struck on Tuesday. Yarra is also looking for a chief executive as its current boss, Dion Hershan, steps into an executive chairman role while keeping oversight of Yarra’s equities team. “The foundations are in place for a great asset management business,” says Dion Hershan.

Investor Strategy

The major asset servicing firms are widening their field of vision and have, for the most part, become front-to-back-office providers, as middle-office outsourcing becomes ubiquitous for big investors and managers. It is a development which has taken place concurrently with tightening revenue streams among asset managers, which are often under the same ownership umbrella as the asset servicing firms and custodian banks. In the past month, for instance, one of the leaders in promoting the benefits of outsourced middle-office functions, Northern Trust, has announced two deals which strengthen what it calls its ‘Whole Office’ platform.

Early in February Northern Trust announced it had entered an alliance with IHS Markit, to integrate its ‘thinkFolio’ order management system with the Northern Trust middle-office platform. Then, the following week, it announced an equity investment in front-office system provider Equity Data Science (EDS), which will allow its cloud-based analytics platform to also be integrated into the Northern Trust Whole Office platform. According to Pete Cherecwich, Northern’s Chicago-based president of corporate and institutional services: “We want to be able to offer everything of interest to investment managers.”

The rest of this article can be found at ioandc.com.

InvestorDaily

Aviva Investors has appointed a chief investment officer of its real assets business. Daniel McHugh will be taking the role, replacing predecessor real assets CIO Mark Versey, as he has become the group’s new chief executive. In his new role, Mr McHugh will report to Mr Versey and will be responsible for the strategy and growth of Aviva Investors’ integrated real assets business, encompassing real estate, infrastructure and private debt.

He will oversee around 33 professionals working across fund and asset management, development, transactions, origination, underwriting, research and business management. Mr McHugh will join the Aviva Investors executive team. He joined the company in 2018 as managing director, real estate. He is also a member of the real assets senior leadership team.

The rest of this article can be found at investordaily.com.au.

InvestorDaily