AvSuper awards two off-market mandates

AvSuper has launched its first venture into the unlisted private equity secondary and distressed opportunity markets, awarding two $20 million mandates to overseas managers.

Coller Capital is a private equities specialist with offices in London and New York, and Siguler Guff describes itself as a multi-strategy private equity investment firm, and has offices in New York, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, Shanghai and Moscow.

The two new $20 million investments are new investments rather than coming from other mandates, with some of the money coming from cash reserves the fund has been building up over the past few months in anticipation of the new investment, according to AvSuper chief executive Michelle Griffiths.

The rest of the investment came from a reduction in the fund’s allocation to Australian equities, Griffiths said.

Both new managers are in sectors AvSuper had been watching for some time and hadn’t previously had investments in, Griffiths said. Now seemed to be a good time to invest.

She said this was likely to be the last change in terms of new investments and structures to arise from the last asset management meeting with the fund’s asset consultants JANA.