Home / Anne-Marie to bow out from HESTA

(Pictured: Anne-Marie Corboy)

One of Australia’s longest-serving industry fund chief executives, Anne-Marie Corboy, has announced her intention to step down from the $29 billion HESTA at the end of February next year.

Having been appointed to her role in 1998, she said in a release last Friday, she was now hoping to develop a portfolio of non-executive directorships, although she was not ruling out another executive role or project work. She will, in fact, not start a previously announced directorship of the Utilities Trust of Australia until March next year. She will be HESTA’s representative on that board.

She is currently also on the boards of Industry Super Australia, the Australian Council of Superannuation Investors and an alternate director on ISPT. She has been a director of several high-profile boards in the past, too, including the MCG Trust, the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, Victorian Superannuation Board, Industry Fund Services and State Superannuation Board.

HESTA, which operates in the health and community services sector, currently has about 785,000 members, compared with 350,000 members 16 years ago. Assets have increased at a much faster rate, of course, with the current $29 billion compared to $1.4 billion in 1998. Staff size has also increased, from 15 to 118 in the same timeframe.

Angela Emslie, the chair, said that Corboy left the fund in a very strong position for the next stage of its development. She noted in Friday’s statement: “Anne-Marie’s exceptional leadership of HESTA over the past 16 years has created an organisation of very high standing with its members, employers, staff, service providers and other stakeholders. She has led a first class culture dedicated to providing outstanding member benefits which are relevant to the needs of people in the health and community services sector, the vast majority of them women…”

Emslie, who has been a trustee director of several industry funds, is also active in the sector as a founding director, since 2004, of the Lime Management Group, which provides consulting services to health and community services operations. She became independent chair of HESTA last year.

In terms of a successor, the statement said: “The HESTA Board will commence appropriate processes to fill the vacancy.”

Unlike many funds, HESTA has a deputy chief executive, Debby Blakey, who has been with the fund since 2008 running the member advice area, and then deputy chief executive in 2012.