SWFI First Read, December 16, 2017

Posted on 12/16/2017

Facebook Concedes that Using FaceBook Could be Bad for Consumers

David Ginsberg is Facebook’s director of research. Moira Burke is a computational social psychologist on the Data Science team at Facebook since early 2012. They published a post on Facebook entailing the impact the social network has on peoples’ moods. According to the December 15, 2017 blog post titled “Hard Questions: Is Spending Time on Social Media Bad for Us?”, they commented that, “University of Michigan students randomly assigned to read Facebook for 10 minutes were in a worse mood at the end of the day than students assigned to post or talk to friends on Facebook.”

The post adds, “A study from UC San Diego and Yale found that people who clicked on about four times as many links as the average person, or who liked twice as many posts, reported worse mental health than average in a survey. Though the causes aren’t clear, researchers hypothesize that reading about others online might lead to negative social comparison — and perhaps even more so than offline, since people’s posts are often more curated and flattering. Another theory is that the internet takes people away from social engagement in person.”

UBS Asset Management Wins Colonial First State Australian REIT Mandate

Sydney-based Colonial First State awarded an approximate A$ 170 million sub-advisory mandate to UBS Asset Management to oversee an Australian real estate investment trust strategy, essentially 50% of the FirstChoice Property Securities fund. The previous advisor of the mandate, Colonial First State Global Asset Management, was terminated.

State Street Global Advisors Names Betty Ng as MD and COO of Asia ex-Japan

State Street Global Advisors hired Betty Ng as managing director and chief operating officer for Asia ex-Japan. This is a new position. Betty Ng started effective December 11, 2017. She will report to June Wong, the company’s senior managing director and head of Asia ex-Japan.

Before this role, Betty Ng was General Manager of Private Wealth Management at the Agricultural Bank of China in Hong Kong.

Kroger to Exit from Central States Pension Fund

The Kroger Company, a supermarket chain owner, inked a new labor agreement with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT). The deal permits the company to exit from the Central States Pension Fund. The Central States Pension Fund could be insolvent by 2025. Kroger Company and IBT formed a new investment fund called the International Brotherhood of Teamsters Consolidated. Kroger Company owns stores and chains such as Fred Meyer, Ralphs, QFC, King Soopers, Smith’s, and Lucky’s Market.

Keywords: State Street Corporation.