102: Qantas Super's Andrew Spence
Conversations with Institutional Investors
Release Date: 07/30/2024
117: Geopolitics with Alan Dupont – Tech wars, Geoeconomics and the Mag 7
Conversations with Institutional Investors
In this episode, I'm speaking with Dr Alan Dupont, who is the founder and CEO of Cognoscenti Group. Alan is a highly respected geopolitical strategist and has advised a wide range of governmental and commercial organisations, including the Northern Territory Government, Asia Society, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute and Outcomes Australia. He has advised several Australian ministers of defence and foreign affairs, and in 2013 established and led the Abbott government's defence white paper team. Alan started his career in government, including as an Army officer, intelligence analyst...
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116: Igneo Infrastructure Partners' Danny Latham – Infrastructure 2.0, Waste to Energy and Transition Assets
Conversations with Institutional Investors
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115: Gain Line Analytics' Ben Darwin – Performance Analytics, Team Cohesion and The Wallabies
Conversations with Institutional Investors
Ben Darwin is the Co-founder and General Manager of Corporate at Gain Line Analytics and in this episode we're going to take a look at what makes teams successful and stay successful. Ben is a former Wallaby player, having played 28 test matches for Australia. He's a former coach and a performance analyst, having worked with a number of rugby teams, including a Japanese team, the NTT Shining Arcs and Suntory Sungoliath, he started Gain Line in 2013 out of a desire to introduce a greater degree of empirical analysis into professional sports. But his research goes broader than just...
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114: Bellmont Securities' Michael Block – The Michael Block Roadmap to Investing
Conversations with Institutional Investors
Michael Block is Chief Investment Officer of Bellmont Securities and Adjunct Industry Professor at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS), where he helped establish the UTS Anchor Fund. The UTS Anchor Fund is a live investment portfolio managed by students to give them hands on experience with managing portfolios. In this episode, we take a look at Michael's extensive career in investing, spanning roles with Future Plus, Nambawan Super, Australian Catholic Superannuation & Retirement Fund and now Bellmont Securities, and discuss the lessons learned during this time and how you can...
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113: FCLT's Eduard van Gelderen – Long Term Investing, Concentrated Portfolios and Decarbonisation
Conversations with Institutional Investors
Eduard van Gelderen is Head of Research for Focusing Capital on the Long Term (FCLT), an organisation that was established in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis, or Great Recession as it is known in the US, to move away from a so-called “quarterly capitalism”, which arguably contributed to the crisis, and towards a true long-term mind-set.
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112: Fulcrum's Suhail Shaikh – Absolute Return Investing, Market Timing and The Role of Luck
Conversations with Institutional Investors
Suhail Shaikh is Chief Investment Officer of Fulcrum Asset Management and is the portfolio manager of Fulcrum’s Discretionary Macro and Diversified Absolute Return strategies. In today’s incredibly volatile environment of tariff wars and deglobalisation, investors tend to be more sensitive about the level of their absolute returns, than their performance against the benchmark. In this episode, we delve into the philosophy of absolute return investing, we talk about the role of skill versus luck, the use
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111: ART's Michael Weaver – The Role of Real Assets in a Pension Portfolio
Conversations with Institutional Investors
In episode 111 of the [i3] Podcast, we speak with Michael Weaver, who is the Head of Global Real Assets with the Australian Retirement Trust. We discussed the role of real assets in the context of a multi-asset, pension portfolio, the ever-lurking threat of inflation, the return of office property and more. Please enjoy the show!
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110: Allspring Global Investment's Jamie Newton – Is Now The Time to Add Duration?
Conversations with Institutional Investors
In episode 110 of the [i3] Podcast, we speak with Jamie Newton, Head of Global Fixed Income Research and Deputy Head of Sustainability at Allspring Global Investments. We discuss why now is a good time to add duration to fixed income portfolios, concerns over the lack of experience with high default rates in private credit and opportunities in data centres and other digital assets. Enjoy the Show!
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109: Is DeepSeek What It Promised To Be? – Will Liang Explains New AI Model
Conversations with Institutional Investors
In episode 109, we are back with Will Liang, Executive Director at MA Financial, to discuss the introduction of DeepSeek and the impact on the future development of artificial intelligence and the global economy. Are tech firms going to scale back their investments due to this low cost model, or is it all a bit of a hype? Enjoy the Show!
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108: Victory Park Capital's Brendan Carroll – Private Credit, Asset-backed Lending, ChatGPT
Conversations with Institutional Investors
Private credit has evolved significantly since the global financial crisis, and Brendan Carroll, Senior Partner at Victory Park Capital, has been at the forefront of that transformation. In this episode, we explore how private credit investments are adapting to meet the needs of insurers, the growing role of asset-backed lending, and why insurance companies are becoming the fastest-growing investor base in the space.
info_outlineIn episode 102 of the [i3] Podcast, we speak with Andrew Spence, Chief Investment Officer of the $9 billion corporate super fund Qantas Super. Qantas Super recently announced to merge with ART and we took the opportunity to look back at the investment strategy that Spence put in place as the fund's first CIO, the innovations along the way and lessons learned.
Overview of podcast with Andrew Spence, CIO of Qantas Super
02:00 I came on board when Qantas Super decided to split the CEO and CIO role into two roles.
05:00 When I started there were nine active managers in the Australian equity portfolio and no passive investments. Whatever the question was, the answer was not nine active managers.
11:00 The GFC meant we took a safety first, peer unaware approach to our portfolio. Because if members experience too much volatility they switch to a lower risk option
12:00 What I inherited was a bunch of commingled funds and no individual mandates. Then as we went through the GFC, what we found was that a lot of these products were gated and didn’t have the liquidity that was on the tin
13:00 There is increasingly less competition in the small and mid-market
14:00 Talking timberland
19:00 The delegation framework has been a competitive advantage for us
19:45 At the end of 2008, the chair of the investment committee came to me and said: ‘We seem to be holding you up a bit’.
21:00 The trustee’s role is to govern and the management’s team is to manage and be held accountable for the outcome they deliver
24:00 We saw a lot of member switching during the onset of the pandemic and that meant these members missed out on the recovery in the next 12 to 18 months
25:00 We didn’t hit any of our illiquidity tolerance levels, but we came close
29:00 Addressing sequencing risk through a glide path
33:00 I think it is important to make information is freely available across the team and is not just held by the CIO
34:00 By the end of 2019, the investment committee was pushing us to be more peer aware
39:00 Tax managed, centralised portfolio management saved us $250 million over 10 years
40:00 The partnership model has worked well for us
42:00 Backing managers early on in their career means we were invested in each others success
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