AustralianSuper

Last year a big super fund, Aware Super, shocked the M&A market in Australia with a surprise bid for a listed company, OptiComm. It signalled a new era in competition among players at the big end of town. It was the first time a super fund had tried to buy a whole listed company in…

AustralianSuper is no longer the underdog. The question is what becomes of the industry fund culture when industry funds “are the status quo”. As Australia’s first $200 billion+ megafund, AustralianSuper is no longer the upstart born of the 2006 merger of the Australian Retirement Fund (ARF) and the Superannuation Trust of Australia (STA). It’s also…

In his final speech to the Australian Council of Superannuation Investors (ACSI), Ian Silk defended the organisation against all comers. But the Morrison Government is unlikely to relent. “To be prudent stewards of capital and to act in their members’ best interests, investors must remain focused on ESG issues in their portfolios,” Ian Silk said…

Ian Silk, soon to retire from AustralianSuper, was an infrequent speaker on the conference circuit, but his speeches were memorable. Two were very memorable and, as you might expect, prescient. AustralianSuper announced last week (July 13) that Silk, the first chief executive of AustralianSuper, would retire later this year. He is being replaced by Paul…

Last week was a big one for the chief executives of AustralianSuper and Cbus. Their funds announced record-setting returns for the financial year and the next day they both took another hammering from a Commonwealth parliamentary committee. The House of Representatives Standing Committee on Economics, chaired by Tim Wilson, a Liberal MP, is often enlivened…

Industry fund-owned ‘The New Daily’ is once again in political hot water after a controversial deal with AustralianSuper to auto-subscribe 800,000 of the fund’s members to the publication. ‘The New Daily’ has become a bee in the bonnet for a number of Liberal backbenchers, most notably NSW Senator Andrew Bragg, who has characterised the publication…

It’s approaching orthodoxy that a merger is always in the best interests of members. But is bigger always better? What is the true price of scale? Leeanne Turner, Spirit Super’s inaugural chief executive, told a CMSF audience in May: “If you’re not considering a merger then you either have your head in the sand or…

In a year of bad-news headlines for the super industry, it was fitting that the biggest fund, the quintessential industry fund, took out the ‘Fund of the Year’ award from Chant West. AustralianSuper, the bellwether fund and champion of the not-for-profit sector, also won the ‘Best Fund of the Year: Investments’, an increasingly difficult task…

Club Plus Super, the NSW-based industry fund representing primarily the employees of licensed clubs, has elected AustralianSuper as its preferred merger partner. In a joint announcement last week (May 13), Stefan Strano, the chief executive of Club Plus, said that exploring a merger was in the best interest of members. The funds have signed a…

Michael Rice officially entered the wind-down period of his career last Friday (April 30) with the completion of the sale of Rice Warner, now to be known as Deloitte Superannuation. All but a handful of administrative staff transferred, moving out of the heritage-listed 2 Martin Place office, around the corner and a few hundred metres…