S&P takes funds off ‘hold’
The dust is beginning to settle on the Australian Securities and Investments Commission’s ban on short selling, with major ratings house Standard & Poor’s (S&P) removing its ‘on hold’ assessment of a number of funds.
The ratings house said the ‘on hold’ rating had been removed because it had gained “a level of comfort that the affected funds were able to continue to execute their mandates”.
S&P fund services analyst Simon Scott said there were three funds from the alternative strategies tactical peer group that did not implement single-stock strategies and implemented their positions through the futures and forward markets.
“After consultation with these and a number of other participants, we are comfortable that the derivatives markets are functioning as expected and these managers can effectively implement their strategies and hedges,” he said.
“It has become evident that most managers have been actively reducing risk rather than transferring positions to other markets to try and gain the same exposure synthetically,” Scott said.
“We continue to be wary of those entering markets in which they do not usually participate in order to gain exposure, such as the global credit default swap market.”
Recommended for you
The FSCP has announced its latest verdict, suspending an adviser’s registration for failing to comply with his obligations when providing advice to three clients.
Having sold Madison to Infocus earlier this year, Clime has now set up a new financial advice licensee with eight advisers.
With licensees such as Insignia looking to AI for advice efficiencies, they are being urged to write clear AI policies as soon as possible to prevent a “Wild West” of providers being used by their practices.
Iress has revealed the number of clients per adviser that top advice firms serve, as well as how many client meetings they conduct each week.
