AustralianSuper expands New York office team

AustralianSuper has announced a number of major new hires to its New York office as it aims to increase its exposure to US markets, focus on investing in private markets and grow the presence to almost 100 colleagues within three years.

The new hires included:

• Jennie Rose who was appointed as senior investment director, private debt, and joined from Barings’ infrastructure debt team would be responsible for building and managing AustralianSuper global infrastructure debt portfolio
• Aaron Witte and Dominic Borrasch who were appointed senior portfolio manager and portfolio manager, respectively, private debt and who both joined from boutique private equity manager SwanCap Partners and would focus on expanding AustralianSuper’s north American private equity portfolio
• Emilce Song who was appointed investment director, infrastructure, and joined from Macquarie Capital and would manage the infrastructure equity portfolio with a focus on power and renewables and energy transition opportunities
• Kang Peng was appointed associate director, infrastructure, joined from Transurban Group and would concentrate at AustralianSuper on the North American infrastructure equity portfolio and cover sub-sectors such as digital infrastructure, transport and energy transition

The super fund also said that its head of private equity, Terry Charalambous, was now also based in New York where he joined head of American Infrastructure, Derek Chu.

“We are a growing fund looking for private market opportunities and now have a team of 15 senior investment professionals in the New York office, which was opened last year,” Charalambous said commenting on the appointments.

AustralianSuper currently has $74 billion invested in the US, split between $43 billion in listed equities, $23 billion in private markets and almost $8 billion invested in fixed interest.

The opening of the US office followed the ongoing build out of the London team – which had specialist skills across private markets and was the home of the Fund’s northern hemisphere trading desk, with the UK team on track to have a staff of over 150 investment professionals by 2026, the firm said.