The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA) has appointed a former director of Japanese equities at BlackRock to develop a strategy for the country’s markets.
The institution has announced that Hisashi Kuroda has joined from Meiji Yasuda Asset Management, a leading Japanese investment management and trust services advisory, where he had spent the past five years.
Between March 2001 and February 2009, he had been a director at BlackRock—formerly Merrill Lynch Investment Management—in its large cap equities team.
“It gives us great pleasure to welcome Hisashi to lead our Japanese desk,” said Mohamed Alqamzi, executive director, Internal Equities Department at ADIA. “His deep knowledge and exceptional track record in managing Japanese equities will further enhance our internal capabilities in one of the world’s most important and dynamic equity markets.”
Kuroda will report to Greg Eckersley, global head of internal equities, who joined ADIA in January 2013. He is among several recent senior hires to the internal equities team. In May, ADIA appointed John Pandtle from Eagle Asset Management to lead its US equites team.
In June, ADIA revealed it had taken around $70 billion out of the asset pool available to the world’s global investment firms in 2014. It said it had grown its staff by 150 to 1,650 over 2014 and moved a further 10 percentage points of its estimated $770 billion in assets to be managed internally.
In its latest investment disclosure, ADIA said it had a minimum 10% and maximum 20% allocation to developed Asian equities, which would include Japan.
Kuroda holds a BA in Economics from Keio University in Japan and an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in the US.