A former head of socially responsible investment and institutional salesman at BT Financial Group has taken a newly-created role at Macquarie-owned hedge fund manager, MQ.
Duncan Hodnett will join MQ on July 2 in the role of Australian institutional sales head, reporting to global director of sales James Hall. The appointment would allow Kathy Kovacs, divisional director of Macquarie’s equity markets group, more time to focus on strategic issues according to Hall. “;Kathy had been doing a lot of the talking to super funds but we’ve been looking for an addition to the team for some time,”; Hall said. MQ has about $1 billion under management across products including a multi-strategy fund, an Asian long/short fund and a Japanese market neutral fund. Hall said Hodnett’s business-building experience on the sustainable investing side at BT was attractive.
AustralianSuper’s appointment of a general manager, retirement to replace Shawn Blackmore, which follows ART's redeployment of Kathy Vincent to chief operating officer, shows that mega funds are back-pedalling on the strategy of having dedicated retirement C-suite executives. The role had been touted as the next big thing in super funds' organisational structures, but experts say what matters is there is senior accountability for decumulation.
Darcy SongDecember 4, 2024
