Cbus appoints new CIO, aims for 50% in-house IM

Big construction industry fund, Cbus has trumpeted the stability of its internal investment team at the same time as announcing the departure of its long-serving chief investment officer, Brett Chatfield who is being replaced by Leigh Gavin.

Chatfield is departing the fund to take up a CIO role at a private family office and the fund paid tribute to his contribution including being responsible for bringing a substantial slab of the fund’s investment management in-house.

His successor, Gavin, comes with a strong industry funds pedigree having joined the fund in 2023 after being Head of Investment Model Design at AustralianSuper prior to which he was chief investment officer at LUCRF Super and having earlier involvement at Frontier Advisers.

Interestingly, Cbus chief executive, Kristian Fok, is a former deputy director of Consulting at Frontier and the fund’s former CIO. He became CEO in June, 2023.

“Leigh’s previous CIO experience, and skills honed managing local and global portfolios will allow him to build on our already strong investment foundations. Leigh’s tenure begins as the fund aims to deploy over $20 billion of our members’ savings in the next five years, where the aim is to deploy at least $5 billion for private markets and $10 billion for domestic investment,” Fok said

He said Gavin would oversee the launch of Cbus’ active large-cap Core Australian equities strategy and continue to grow our internal global markets strategies.

Fok said that Gavin would also continue to build on the differentiated hybrid investment model (first overseen by Fok) “that has helped attract the best investment talent to Cbus, as the fund driven down investment costs”.

The announcement noted that Cbus was aiming to move from a position of managing about 34% of its investments internally to 50% within three years.

It claimed that the Cbus investment talent strategy was playing out pointing to the appointment of Matt Kempton to the role of Head of Equity Strategies, reporting to the CIO, who will begin in August.

The changes within the investment management ranks have occurred less than a year after media criticism of Cbus based on the departure of a number of senior executives.