Australia’s superannuation funds have nearly the highest proportion of internal asset management in the world, but there’s plenty of questions hanging over the practice even as funds push into more expensive niche asset classes.
The retirement chief of the $335 billion AustralianSuper, who was “instrumental” in delivering a slew of member experience uplifts across a 17-year stint with the fund, will leave this month to establish a new venture.
Former Cooper PM heads to Munro
Ma was previously the portfolio manager for Cooper’s Asian Equities Fund. Her resignation saw Cooper shutter the fund, the first closure in its 21 year history. Prior to her time at Cooper, Ma spent nearly a decade with hedge funds including Coatue Management and Jerico Capital in New York City.
“I have admired Munro from afar for years and I am deeply humbled by the opportunity to join the firm,” Ma said. “I look forward to hunting for the best long term investment ideas in global growth companies for our investors.”
At Munro, Ma will be responsible for contributing research and stock ideas to Munro’s global strategies, including its Global Growth Fund, Concentrated Global Growth Fund and Climate Change Leaders Fund. In a statement, Munro Partners CIO Nick Griffin said that Ma’s experience as a high performing portfolio manager who’d covered a wide range of geographies and sectors makes her a “good fit for the business”.
“We are delighted to have Qiao’s extensive experience and unique perspective to help bolster our global equities team,” Griffin said. “Her long track record in identifying underappreciated, long-term, founder led stock opportunities, will be invaluable in helping Munro sustain fund performance and help grow our business in the months and years ahead. We look forward to welcoming Qiao into the Munro partnership and are excited that she has chosen to join us for the journey.”
Like many other Asia-focused funds, Cooper’s Asian Equities fund had recently hit a rough patch, returning -20.86 per cent over the last year. But it remained comfortably ahead of its benchmark – the MSCI AC Asia ex Japan – with an annualised return of 8.07 per cent since its 2007 inception against the benchmark’s 4.93 per cent.
“At both a firm and personal level I am deeply disappointed that CI has been unable to build the team required to deliver on our ambitions with our Asian ex Japan strategy,” Cooper Investors CIO and managing director Peter Cooper wrote in a letter to investors last week (February 2). “… We are deeply committed to investing in Asia by focusing on the CI specialty and institutional funds which continue to have material exposure to Asia including India and Japan.
“We will continue to apply the proprietorial CI Way (sic) of investing and deploy further resources to the research and the pursuit of Asian stock opportunities.”
