HESTA has announced it will bring its active Australian equities investment management team in-house as part of a move to internalise its investments.
Over the next two years, the $68 billion fund said it hoped to have half of its active Australian equities managed in-house and had appointed Steven Semczyszyn to lead the team.
Semczyszyn was general manager for growth assets and had joined HESTA in 2020 from a chief investment officer role at JCP Investment Partners.
HESTA said this would be followed by the fixed income and cash teams in due course and that it was targeting at least 15% of the total portfolio being internally managed in the short to medium term.
This was part of a ‘hybrid strategy’ combining direct investment with external asset managers.
Chief executive, Debby Blakey, said: “Our internal asset management team will help bring us even closer to capital markets, giving us greater access to cutting-edge global investment thinking. This will help us continue to deliver strong, long-term returns and ensure members’ investments are well positioned for a dynamically changing world.”
The internalisation programme had resulted in changes to the senior leadership team and it expected to make further hires in the fixed income and cash teams.
HESTA chief investment officer, Sonya Sawtell-Rickson said: “Our senior leadership structure has been carefully designed to help deliver the overall investment program and portfolio strategy and is aimed at enhancing an innovative, leading investment team, with plans to support future growth in capability and capacity”.
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