South Korea’s Shinhan BNP Paribas Asset Management is inviting third-party managers to bid on a 100 billion won (US$903.4 million) absolute return bond mandate.
The company will hire two managers, who will be responsible for investments in Asia US dollar-denominated investment grade bonds, according to its request for proposal published on the website of the Korea Financial Investment Association on December 21.
At least 80% will be allocated to sovereign and quasi-sovereign bonds, and up to 20% to corporate debt.
Applicants must have a minimum five-year track record in Asia dollar bond investment. They must have at least $5 billion of total fixed income assets, including $1 billion in Asia dollar bonds.
Japan’s Government Pension Investment Fund (GPIF) will benchmark another 1.3 trillion yen (US$12.5 billion) of sustainable investments in foreign equities against two indices from MSCI Inc. and Morningstar.
The pension fund, which adopted environmental, social and governance (ESG) investing in 2017, had outsourced around 5.7 trillion yen of ESG investments in both domestic and foreign equities as of end-2019.
These are benchmarked against five indices developed by MSCI, FTSE Russell and S&P Dow Jones Indices.
The two new additions for foreign equity investments are the MSCI ACWI ESG Universal Index and Morningstar Gender Diversity Index.
According to GPIF President Miyazono Masataka, they are in line with “our objective of improving long-term returns through enhanced sustainability of individual issuers and the market as a whole”.
Malaysia’s financial sector will likely see stiff competition unfold over the next couple of years when digital banks make their debut and try to wrest market share from traditional lenders.
This is a scenario that is already set to play out in neighbouring Singapore, where the central bank recently issued four licences to non-bank companies.
Malaysia’s central bank, Bank Negara Malaysia, is the final stages of developing a licensing framework for digital banking, Assistant Governor Adnan Zaylan Mohamad Zahid said in a speech at a virtual financial technology conference on December 2. He didn’t provide a time line for launch.
Japan’s Nomura Asset Management veteran Hiroyuki Nishikawa, who currently heads its Islamic fund management unit in Malaysia, is retiring in January after almost 40 years working for the group in Asia, Europe and the US, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Hiroyuki Nishikawa
Nomura has already identified Mr. Nishikawa’s successor as managing director of Kuala Lumpur-based Nomura Islamic Asset Management, and an announcement is expected once the candidate is approved by Securities Commission Malaysia, the person says.
“The Securities Commission is currently reviewing the application,” the person tells
Asia Asset Management, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Mr. Nishikawa, who also sits on the unit’s board, was appointed in June 2019 after five years as chairman of Nomura Asset Management Singapore.
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