Mark Delaney

Australia’s biggest super fund has sharpened its focus on offshore markets with the appointment of a new head of international and private equity operating out of its London office.

Some of the country’s biggest super funds have navigated volatile markets and write-downs in one of their favourite asset classes to deliver solid returns in a tough year.

AustralianSuper’s appointment of a new deputy CIO with the lion’s share of responsibility for its overseas investments demonstrates the growing importance of international diversification for the country’s biggest funds.

AustralianSuper CIO Mark Delaney believes the fund is harder on internal teams than external managers, but says that its unlisted property experience has been “the worst of all worlds”.

For every government that wants to work alongside superannuation funds, there’s one waiting in the wings to deliver a regulatory rebuke. Big super needs to think hard about its plans to build the future.

Some within the sector believe the super wars are over and that industry funds have emerged victorious. But they shouldn’t take their primacy, or the change in government, for granted.

Australia’s super funds are racing to achieve massive size in the understanding that it will create untold benefits for members. But “a little but of circumspection and caution” is required. “People seem to be taking it as a fact that you just need to be bigger, and that it’s obvious you need to be bigger…

As AustralianSuper continues to grow, Mark Delaney is focusing his attention on the burgeoning private markets space and the problem of culture in megafund land. “Size can creep up on you. You stand still, and all of a sudden you’re bigger than what you think you are. I first started managing pension money 20 years…

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…