Fund Product, Company and Regulatory Updates as at 25 September 2018

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Product Updates

Uni students running hedge fund

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A hedge fund is now running out of the University of New South Wales with students running a long-short portfolio of ASX 300 stocks with ESG filters attached. Australian Students Asset Management (ASAM) is the creation of a student, to run at the university with Sydney University, UTS and Macquarie, expanding to Melbourne.

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Company Updates

Class actions planned against retail super funds

Slater and Gordon are planning to lodge class actions against a few of the biggest retail superannuation funds in Australia, with the law firm saying that up to a third of Australians may be eligible to join. Companies involved in the class action include Colonial First State and AMP Super.

IOOF sells AET

IOOF has sold off the Australian Executor Trustees (AET) corporate trust business to Sargon Capital, a financial services tech company. The sale price tag was set at $51.6 million. IOOF is keeping the AET private trust business.

Combined Super to merge with Prime Super

In July Combined Super is set to merge with Prime Super, creating a combined pool of near to $5 billion in funds under management.

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Regulatory Updates

ASIC commencing civil proceedings against ANZ

The Australian and New Zealand Banking Group (ANZ) is to be in court over allegations of continuous disclosure breaches relating to a $2.5 billion institutional share placement from 2015. ASIC alleges that ANZ contravened the Corporations Act by not notifying the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) that almost $800 million of the $2.5 billion in ANZ shares offered in the placement was being bought by its underwriters, as opposed to placed with investors.

ASIC updates regulatory approvals for new products and ETFs of the Chi-X market

ASIC has modified the market integrity guidelines for a new financial product being introduced to the Chi-X Australia Limited exchange, transferable custody receipts (TraCRs).

ASIC stops proposed initial coin offerings

ASIC has taken action against some proposed initial coin offerings and token generation events aimed at retail investors. A product disclosure statement was recently prevented from being published for a crypto-asset managed investment scheme. ASIC was concerned about misleading or deceptive statements, operating an illegal, unregistered managed investment scheme, and/or not holding a financial services licence.