Australian Corporate CIO Exits for Asset Manager

Telstra Super CIO Jim Christensen has quit the Australian pension to return to asset management with QIC.

Christensen has left the A$16 billion (US$11.5 billion) fund—the largest corporate superannuation fund in Australia—after five years in charge of its investment team. He will start his new role as managing director for global multi-asset on January 11.

Before joining Telstra, Christensen led the active management division at QIC, which was founded by the government of Queensland, Australia, to run its pension money in 1991.

The appointment is part of a “planned succession process”, QIC said in a statement, which will allow CIO Adriaan Ryder to “primarily focus on strategic level investment advice and relationships with the Queensland government” and other clients.

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Damien Frawley, CEO of QIC, said Christensen brought “a unique blend of investment leadership expertise across multiple asset classes, a whole-of-cycle-investment philosophy, and client-first ethos” to the role.

Frawley added that the revised role for Ryder would be beneficial for QIC as it would allow him to concentrate on “key areas” of strategy and client relations.

QIC currently manages assets on behalf of more than 90 institutional clients and is still government-owned.

In May, QIC established a A$1 billion infrastructure partnership with the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, the pension’s first venture into Asia-Pacific infrastructure.

Institutional investors believe corporate governance is a critical driver of performance, but struggle to focus on the long term, Aberdeen Asset Management has argued.

Corporate governance plays an essential role in investment decisions—but achieving good governance requires less focus on short-term performance, according to Aberdeen Asset Management.

The firm’s new survey found that 89% of institutional investors, trustees, managers, and consultants considered effective governance to be a critical driver of investment performance. As a result, 85% said asset managers should engage with invested companies both before commitments are made and at regular intervals afterward.

The respondents also rated poor governance as one of the biggest challenges companies faced, second only to tax regulations.

“A company is much more likely to talk to you if they don’t think you’ll sell their bonds or shares at the sight of one set of poor quarterly figures.”

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“The research makes clear that governance has to be a fundamental part of what investors do day-in, day-out,” said Paul Lee, Aberdeen’s head of corporate governance. “It’s all about asset managers understanding what they own and not being shy of having conversations with the companies they invest in.”

Good governance, Lee continued, is most compatible with a long-term investment approach.

“A company is much more likely to talk to you if they don’t think you’ll sell their bonds or shares at the sight of one set of poor quarterly figures,” he said.

However, over two-thirds of survey respondents said their ability to focus on the long term is hurt by a fixation on short-term performance. Nearly half believed regulations also forced short-term thinking and acting. Investors also found a proliferation of models and metrics as a factor promoted short-termism.

“We need to do more as an industry to invest for the long term ourselves and encourage the companies we own to do the same,” Lee said.

Some 57% of respondents also identified governance regimes as a better way to evaluate risk and opportunity than whether the companies were in traditional emerging or developed markets.

Michael McCauley, a senior officer at the Florida State Board of Administration, said governance has been shown empirically to be a “risk mitigant.”

“Governance is a very significant and material factor within investment analysis,” McCauley said. “I always like to think of it as something that is on par with a lot of other fundamental factors that can drive performance and value.”