Former Pendal chief executive and First State Super (now Aware Super) chief investment officer Richard Brandweiner will take over as CIO of the $335 billion Future Fund from June, filling the position left vacant by Ben Samild’s departure for Abu Dhabi Investment Council in September 2025.

“I am delighted to welcome Richard to the Future Fund. He is an experienced investor and executive and has significant experience in leading investment teams to achieve their mandates,” said Future Fund chief executive Raphael Arndt said in a statement.

“I thank Hugh Murray for serving as interim chief investment officer and for his leadership of the investment program through a period of very significant market uncertainty over recent months.”

Brandweiner joins the Future Fund at a significant point in its 20-year history. In late 2024, its investment mandate was changed to require it “to consider Australia’s economic prosperity by having regard to national priorities” when making investments. Those national priorities include supporting the net zero transformation of the Australian economy, increasing the supply of residential housing in Australia and delivering improved infrastructure in Australia.

More recently, the Future Fund has also been permitted to make direct investments in Australian infrastructure and property, which would allow it more latitude to invest in those national priorities, as well as potential defence-related infrastructure assets where the pool of managers is tiny.

Brandweiner has long been an advocate of putting institutional capital to work in Australia’s economy, saying in the past that super funds should expect themselves to be called upon when it comes to investing in key economic areas such as the energy transition.

“I know all of my friends in super are sick of the government coming down, saying ‘we want you to do this’ and ‘we want you to do that’, ‘let’s have a roundtable on it’,” Brandweiner told the Investment Magazine Fiduciary Investors Symposium in 2024.

“I fully appreciate that. But the other side of the coin is true too, though, which is that we are so fortunate to have this incredible system so big in the context of our economy, dwarfing the size of GDP and the equity market.

“Regardless of where you sit on questions like fiduciary duty and other sorts of things, the way the super system gets invested will help shape the world that we all retire into. It’s just too big in the context of our economy not to play that [energy transition facilitation] role.”

But Brandweiner is also described by former colleagues as somebody who is clear-minded about risk and will be able to guide the Future Fund to invest in areas of national interest in a thoughtful manner, with an understanding of what strategies and assets it should and should not back.

At First State Super, he was responsible for the fund’s push into the sustainability and ESG space, and was a proponent of impact investing, including in social and affordable housing, though he has also conceded that the fund had difficulty making some of those investments stack up on a shorter-term return basis without supportive government policy.

“Fiduciary investors have a job to do, which is to generate the best risk-adjusted returns they can for the given level of risk they have to take on, and that is just a non-negotiable policy,” Brandweiner told the SRI360 podcast in November.

Brandweiner also serves on a number of boards and investment committees. He is chair of Impact Investing Australia and sits on the ICs of Aboriginal Investment NT and a number of family offices. He is also an advisory board member of The Conexus Institute*.

“Richard’s career experiences in managing complex situations and a performance culture are impressive,” said David Bell, executive director of The Conexus Institute.

“I’ve always found his deep experience in sustainability, and ability to tie that back to investment and portfolio decisions, fascinating. Richard has always been a thoughtful contributor to The Conexus Institute advisory board, often presenting an alternative framing to a complex challenge.”

The Future Fund said that Brandweiner’s appointment follows a global search process in line with Australian Public Service requirements. HESTA CIO Sonya Sawtell-Rickson, Colonial First State CIO Jonathan Armitage, and Blue Owl managing director and former Future Fund deputy CIO Alicia Gregory are all understood to have been under consideration for the role.

“The Future Fund has a compelling purpose as Australia’s sovereign wealth fund,” Brandweiner said. “Its investment approach and capabilities are globally respected. I look forward to working with the team and the Board of Guardians to continue to deliver strong risk-adjusted returns for Australia.”

*The Conexus Institute is a not-for-profit think-tank philanthropically funded by Conexus Financial, the publisher of Investment Magazine.