The chair of Women In Super for NSW, Suzanne Pence, has started a new role after departing her job as client relationship manager for State Street Investor Services.

Pence has joined Newport Capital, a self-described ‘technology investment adviser’ which provides niche investment banking services to telco, IT, media and ‘sophisticated manufacturing’ companies.

Newport, founded 22 years ago by long-time IBM executive Lou Richard, has not dealt with institutionl investors since the tech wreck, however Pence said IPO activity in the technology space was rebounding and she would be involved in offering a Newport fund to super schemes and others in coming months. However Pence suspected there was little institutional appetite for investee companies still at the ‘ideas stage’, so the fund would invest in firms which had been “percolating a bit longer” on the next stop down the venture capital spectrum.

Pence has been at Newport less than two weeks after a six-month stint at State Street Investor Services (SSIS), where she had been relationship manager for managers using Equity Trustees as responsible entity, such as PIMCO and Axa Rosenberg. She was retrenched at the height of the GFC-fuelled cutbacks across global financial services firms.

Pence previouly worked at Perpetual Investments, whose backoffice has long been coveted by SSIS, as a senior portfolio specialist for global shares and multi-sector funds. Prior to that she was at Franklin Templeton as an institutional business development manager.