Rowell openly stated that some of the current mergers being discussed were not to APRA’s liking.
“Over the past eight years, about 70 APRA-regulated funds have finalised mergers, and there are currently around a dozen potential mergers under consideration that we know of,” she said. “While this is welcome, we’re not convinced all of these mergers are producing a new entity that has either the governance capability or the scale to be sustainable over the long-term.”
“The emerging industry view seems to be that any fund with less than around $30 billion in assets under management is increasingly going to be uncompetitive against the so-called ‘mega-funds’,” she said.