The Future Fund has renewed its push into active equity management in the emerging markets, tipping money into boutique Australian manager Northcape Capital as it looks to capitalise on opportunities in the asset class. 

While the Future Fund does not comment on specific investments or managers, and would not directly confirm the appointment, Northcape was not listed as a manager of emerging market equities in the Future Fund’s 2024-25 annual report but has been added to the line-up online, which lists managers as at 31 December 2025. 

“We adjust allocations and strategies across managers in response our overall risk settings as well as the specific opportunities and strategies that we identify in the market,” a Future Fund spokesperson told Investment Magazine. “This reflects our joined-up approach to investing and commitment to managing and adjusting the portfolio as the opportunities and conditions evolve.”

State Street Investment Management has also been dropped from the emerging markets line-up, suggesting the allocation could be a chunky one, assuming none of the money it managed was re-distributed to Robeco, Insight or UBS – the other managers in the Future Fund’s emerging markets roster. The Future Fund added all three managers post its 2017 pivot to passive management in many areas of the listed equity markets.

In September 2025, then-Future Fund chief investment officer Ben Samild told Investment Magazine that the sovereign wealth fund had been weighing opportunities for it to expand the active equity program it re-launched in 2023.

“There are real opportunities elsewhere in other markets where we can observe real inefficiencies; that’s a long-term framework and a long-term program,” Samild said at the time. “We’ve done more in emerging markets this year and would expect other parts of the world to be included over the next couple of years.”

The Future Fund’s previous active equity investments include an allocation to secretive Japanese activist hedge fund Effissimo Capital Management, first reported by Investment Magazine, which followed another investment in Japan’s equity market through Wellington Investment Management. It has also invested in active Australian small caps through Maple-Brown Abbott.

Since 2023, the Future Fund has become one of the few institutional proponents of active external equity management as super funds either shift to passive strategies or bring more money in-house. In the past, it has taken advantage of super funds’ move to bring funds in-house as a way to more cheaply gain significant capacity with an external manager.

The Northcape global emerging markets equities strategy was launched in 2008 and typically holds around 40 stocks, with its largest sector allocations currently in information technology and financials and its largest regional allocations in India and Mexico. The broad emerging markets have been on a tear recently, with the strength of Chinese tech companies and a broadly weaker US dollar making them one of the best-performing asset classes of 2025.

The Future Fund also recently received permission from the Australian government to begin making direct investments in Australian property and infrastructure without using an external manager, which it has been required to do since its inception in 2006. The sovereign wealth fund has also been investing in the areas of “national priority” that it must consider under the controversial changes to its mandate made by Treasurer Jim Chalmers, including by increasing its stake in data centre operator CDC.