AustralianSuper has made its first commitment to a private equity manager on the advice of its global private equity consultant, Hamilton Lane.

The $30 billion industry fund made a $US 75 million commitment to New York-based private equity manager New Mountain Capital, to be drawn on over a three to four year period, according to Terry Charalambous, AustralianSuper’s investment manager for private equity. It is the second commitment AustralianSuper has made to a private equity firm in as many months, the first being a $US 100 million commitment to US-based Macquarie Global Opportunities Partners fund. MGOP’s appointment was different in that AustralianSuper undertook the due diligence on the company internally. The New Mountain commitment reinforces AustralianSuper’s goal of building a single manager program over its fund-of-funds approach to the private equity asset class. Charalambous said the super fund wanted to establish relationships with “high quality private equity groups” but the single manager program will be only a “relatively concentrated number”. Mark Delaney, AustralianSuper chief investment officer, told I&T news last month that New Mountain Capital had an experienced team, good track record and “a bit of a niche position in terms of how they go about their strategy”. New Mountain says it searches for market-leading companies in “;defensive growth”; industries with high barriers to entry, generally deploying $US100-300 million per transaction.