Daniel Kemp

ASIC has expanded its strategic priorities to include ‘consistency and transparency across markets’, which will include scrutiny of private investments.

A revision of Australia’s foreign investment rules will see ‘low-risk’ investments from familiar investors reviewed more quickly, particularly if they are made into non-sensitive sectors.

The Australian government partially backtracked on plans to compare superannuation funds’ unlisted investment performance with listed benchmarks.

The proposed assessment for superannuation funds has drawn criticism over its use of listed indices to benchmark the performance of unlisted assets and its unusual eight-year timeframe.

Controversial Your Future, Your Super changes will remove an exemption to asset disclosure that has allowed superfunds to avoid revealing the value of some unlisted assets.

The roadmap makes 37 recommendations for participants in the financial system that will help achieve net-zero emissions by 2050 and go further than government policy.

A change in the rules allowed members to withdraw almost A$16bn from their accounts in the wake of covid-19. Is the sector able to absorb the shock?

Estimates suggest that as much as A$50bn could be withdrawn from superannuation funds.

All foreign transactions will be subject to FIRB review, a process that will now take six months instead of 30 days.

Managers should get ready for internationalisation, downward pressure on fees and bigger private capital allocations, should the current wave of mergers come to pass.