After Geoff Wells finishes up with Macquarie Funds Management after 12 years this month, he will join a shop full of his quantitative analysis colleagues.
Wells will join GMO Australia as a senior research analyst, reporting to new head of Australian equities, Rick Suvak. Suvak said GMO did not comment informally on personnel matters, but confirmed he had been opportunistically seeking senior investment research and implementation staff. Last September, GMO lost head of Australian equities Max Cappetta and head of equities research Anthony Corr, who joined with erstwhile GMO colleague (via MIR Investments) Brett McElwee to form an Ascalon-backed boutique, Continuum. Wells, who among other achievements at Macquarie helped develop Australia’s first ‘no MER’ indexing product in True Index, has been replaced by a promoted Suhail Mehra.
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
