AustralianSuper has announced the appointment of Damian Moloney as deputy chief investment officer (CIO), effective 1 July.
Mr Moloney first joined the fund in 2018 as head of investments, Europe, and has spent the past five years directly responsible for the expansion of AustralianSuper’s European and US offices, a key part of its global growth strategy.
Before this, he served as chief executive officer of Frontier Advisers and was CEO of IFM Investors between 1995 and 2009.
According to AustralianSuper, he will continue to have responsibility for the international offices as part of the role, in addition to his new global responsibility for strategy and oversight for the investment group.
CIO Mark Delaney said the appointment will be part of a “simpler and more agile investment team”, ensuring a focus on delivering the best possible returns for members in retirement.
“With the fund forecast to grow from its current almost $300 billion to over $500 billion in member assets under management over the next four to five years, Damian’s appointment as deputy CIO is an important step that positions us to deliver simplicity and quality at global scale,” he explained.
Mr Delaney said that AustralianSuper is pushing for around 75 per cent of all members’ money to be managed by internal teams within a decade, and as such, is looking to build on its global operations.
“Damian will play a pivotal role in developing and implementing our model for investing and operating globally in an integrated and efficient way. We expect the global team to grow from the current 100 staff to around 300 over the next three years, with around 130 in New York and 160 in London and a small team in Beijing.”
Moreover, AustralianSuper currently has around half of its $300 billion invested outside of Australia with around $85 billion invested in the US and almost $40 billion invested in the UK and Europe.
Mr Moloney added that he joins the fund at an “opportune” time to improve global coordination.
“With more and more of AustralianSuper’s assets managed internally and invested overseas, I am looking forward to working with our team across the globe in this new role to efficiently grow our investment footprint and operations,” he said.
“AustralianSuper has generated a lot of interest since becoming the first Australian superannuation fund to open global offices and the fund continues to look for the best talent internationally to join our team investing across some of the world’s most important capital markets,” Mr Moloney concluded.
