Industry veteran Graeme Miller will step into the chief investment officer job at Mercer Super after a nearly nine year stint at TelstraSuper where he played a “pivotal role” in shaping its investment strategy and approach to sustainable investing.
The Future Fund had a relatively rosy 2024 but is sticking with its prediction that the global economy will become more fragmented and difficult to navigate for even the largest and most sophisticated institutional investors.
‘My performance doesn’t lie’: Liu responds to relationship revelations
Jun Bei Liu and Jason Todd’s TenCap was launched to much fanfare last month, but the revelation of a romantic relationship between the two co-founders has raised questions in the press about the hedge fund’s governance.
The relationship was largely an open secret in the funds management industry in the months prior to the launch of TenCap. But Liu hit back at the suggestion that Todd had played a role in her Alpha Plus fund (at that time in the Tribeca stable) being added to high conviction lists at Commonwealth Private and Macquarie, saying that he had recused himself from the process due to their then-platonic relationship.
“I have won all my clients due to my great track record and performance; my performance doesn’t lie,” Liu tells ISN. “I was the number one long/short (manager) here in Australia in the last 12 months. In the last three years… I was top three. My performance has been incredible, and all the platforms that have added me have done independent due diligence.”
The relationship has been going on for some time, but TenCap – which has launched with $1.5 billion under management from across the wholesale and institutional landscape – wasn’t founded because of it, Liu says. While Liu wouldn’t say how exactly the relationship was disclosed to clients, she believes that disclosure was appropriate.
“To be honest, we have gotten a lot of advice that this is a personal relationship. Jason and myself run very different functions within the business. I run the investment team 100 per cent and make the day-to-day investment decisions. Jason runs the business, the distribution and operations – every part that has nothing to do with investments. Our duty is to perform our functions and they are completely separate.
“We never hide it, but we do feel it’s a personal relationship that doesn’t require us to – it’s our personal business… My clients invest with me because of my performance.”
Those clients include the $140 billion UniSuper. While superannuation funds have little tolerance for controversy at service providers, UniSuper is known for an even more muscular approach to external management and has in-housed more than 70 per cent of its assets; inclusion on its manager list means clearing a fairly high bar.
UniSuper was contacted with questions about whether it was aware of the relationship and if it had taken any steps to ensure good governance prevailed above and beyond what it would normally do when allocating to an external manager. UniSuper declined to comment.
Update 4:46PM: UniSuper later reversed its position, with CIO John Pearce telling ISN that “Jun Bei has been an outstanding alpha generator for UniSuper over a number of years, and we remain fully committed to supporting her new venture.”
