Nearly every Australian has super, but its settings don’t work for every Australian, according to the First Nations Foundation, which is advocating for changes around estate planning and the preservation age to make the system fairer.
Betting against acts of God is a great way to make money, but institutional allocations to natural catastrophe reinsurance have stayed relatively static even as some managers are generating double-digit uncorrelated returns.
ACSI taps Davidson for vacant top spot
(Pictured: Louise Davidson)
Louise Davidson, the ESG investment manager at Cbus, has been appointed chief executive of the Australian Council of Superannuation Investors, a position made vacant by the resignation of Gordon Hagart in February after 18 months in the role. Davidson had been at Cbus since 2009.
ACSI has 31 Australian super funds members, with combined assets of $400 billion and in recent years has expanded its membership to include six international pension funds, bringing its total assets for which it speaks to $1.6 trillion.
Prior to her role at Cbus, Davidson was manager of sustainability and governance at Industry Funds Management between 2007 and 2009. She is also deputy chair of ESG Research Australia and the secretary of Investor Group on Climate Change.
When Hagart, who replaced the founding chief executive Ann Byrne in September 2013 after her retirement, resigned this year Gerard Noonan, ACSI chair, was quoted as saying the resignation was “unexpected and regrettable”. Hagart returned to live in Europe.
Noonan said last week: “Louise is well known in the nation’s boardrooms where much of ACSI’s important work is conducted. She’s determined to improve corporate governance in listed companies as well as encourage company boards and management to take more seriously their environmental and social impact.”
