How to better reflect climate change impacts and the burgeoning growth of emerging markets into client portfolios will be top priorities for JANA Investment Advisers’ Ken Marshman as he assumes a new role as ‘head of investment outcomes’.
Over the next three months, Marshman’s current managing director role will be split in two, with Ian Patrick becoming chief executive officer and assuming responsibility for JANA’s commercial interests and day-to-day operations. Marshman said he would be freed to spend 80 per cent of his time “;directing the focus of JANA’s research and ensuring our best ideas are implemented in the right places for our clients”;. Patrick, a senior consultant at JANA for the past six years, will be replaced as head of international equities research by Michael Mulcahy, who joined last year from Suncorp Investment Management (where he was a world equities portfolio manager). Marshman will remain chair of JANA and maintain a client-facing role. The investment implications of climate change and “;the globalisation of capital markets”; will be initial priorities for his ‘investment outcomes’ role. “;The arrival of emerging markets and what we know they will become is not reflected in investment portfolios,”; Marshman said. Other areas of interest for Marshman are direct investments, and generally making sure that JANA ideas are well communicated to and understood by clients.
Future Fund chief investment officer Ben Samild said that FY24 has been a great year for alpha creation, thanks to strong returns in equities and, unusually, across multiple hedge fund strategies all at the same time. He reflected the past few years have been “a difficult time to be an asset owner and to generate positive returns for risk assets” but the Future Fund is tracking well of its long-term mandate.
Simon Hoyle and Darcy SongSeptember 4, 2024
