One of the country’s largest super funds has snapped up a portfolio manager from Perpetual Investments’ disbanded direct property team to become its first ever head of property.

Jack McGougan started working at AustralianSuper last fortnight as senior manager, property, reporting to chief investment officer, Mark Delaney. Delaney said about 13.5 per cent of the $28 billion fund was invested in property, most of it domestic and all of it directly held. AustralianSuper has had no listed property trust exposure for almost three years. Until now, head of private equity Terry Charalambous was also responsible for the property portfolio. However, Delaney said private equity had become “much bigger” for the fund and so Charalambous was going to focus more on that. Similarly, McGougan was hired because the property portfolio was growing and “we needed someone to focus on that”. Since McGougan left Perpetual in May, and following the resignations of the remaining two direct property managers – the head, Goran Ujdur, and head of client relations and capital transfer, Tony Hall – Perpetual announced it would close down its direct property operations. McGougan, Ujdur, and Hall were the foundation for Perpetual’s first direct property team in September 2005. The trio was poached from Deutsche Bank where they had overseen the wholesale property division of DB Real Estate. Ujdur and Hall are understood to be working out a notice period at Perpetual until around the end of the year.