UniSuper is restructuring and expanding its investment management team, which entails the creation of a head of strategic tilting position.
The $23 billion industry fund is searching for an additional manager to work on its public markets portfolio, which accounts for nearly $19 billion, as well as an investment analyst to work across private equity and infrastructure and another analyst to assist with portfolio analytics and implementation. The restructure will see Dennis Sams, UniSuper’s manager of public markets, be promoted to head of public markets, a move that will take effect on July 1. Current head of public markets, Paul Laband, will be appointed to the newly-made head of strategic tilting, also effective July 1. “As a broad rule of thumb we have one person for each $1 billion. […] We’re growing the group organically over time, in association with funds under management,” David St John, UniSuper chief investment officer, said. Laband will lead UniSuper’s current strategic tilting research and risk managers, David Schneider and Adam Merrington, in conducting tilts away from the fund’s asset class benchmarks in accordance with independently calculated valuations of those asset classes. “We have been tilting in a range of asset classes and sub-asset classes from time-to-time, with very good results.” Such tilts assume medium to long-term investment outlooks, ranging between three and five years, rather than a short-term market-timing perspective. While the fund has invested in private equity for the past 15 years, and in infrastructure for the past 10 years, it is currently increasing its weighting towards international private equity and is “in the throes of moving into international property,” St John said. Private equity weightings currently account for 5 per cent of the fund’s investments, split 75:25 between offshore and domestic investments. Meanwhile, St John disclosed that UniSuper had apportioned a $350 million international equities mandate to GoldmanSachs JBWere’s Global Flex fund, which invests along a 140/40 split, within the past six months.
Since taking over the top job at the $44 billion Funds SA more than a year ago, chief executive John Piteo has ushered in an investment function overhaul and wrapped up an important stage of the fund’s five-year data transformation program. It pledges to recentre around investment performance and more efficient processes, as the “missing piece” has been found in incoming CIO Con Michalakis.
Darcy SongJanuary 10, 2025
