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Corporate Moves

Australian Fund Head Moves to Mercer

Campbell McCulloch is the first of three new executives who will fill the void left by longtime deputy CIO Phil Graham.

By Chris Butera

Campbell McCulloch



Phil Graham, deputy chief investment officer Pacific at Mercer, will be retiring at the end of the month, and the consulting firm announced the appointment of one of three new chiefs that will fill Graham’s shoes.

Campbell McCulloch will join Mercer as its new head of fund implementation, delegated solutions Pacific in the fourth quarter, Mercer confirmed. He is leaving the Australian Future Fund, where he was the head of investment operations since 2007. Prior to the A$141 billion ($102 billion) sovereign wealth fund, he was a portfolio manager at Vanguard Investment Australia for 10 years.

At his new job, McCulloch will direct the implementation for the Mercer Pacific Funds operations, which centers on investments in Australia and New Zealand.

Kylie Willment, Mercer Pacific’s CIO, said that Campbell’s “outstanding leadership skills and proven track record” will allow Mercer to carry out its investment decisions efficiently. “While it’s with mixed emotions that we say goodbye to Phil, the appointment of Campbell is a fantastic win for Mercer.”

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Graham, the exiting deputy CIO, worked at Mercer for 11 years. His 40 years of financial experience include associate director at Australian advisory firm Deloitte Access Economics, a portfolio strategist at Brisbane’s government investment company QIC, and several economist roles, most notably at the Reserve Bank of Australia, his first job out of college. 

The other two senior roles Mercer will add following Graham’s departure will be the head of investment strategy and the head of portfolio management. They will be announced at a later date. Mercer has not provided comment as to who is in the running for these opportunities.

McCulloch and the Future Fund were unable to be reached for comment.

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Home > News > Market Moves > We’re in the Longest Bull Market in History, or Are We?
Market Moves

We’re in the Longest Bull Market in History, or Are We?

While Wall Street proclaimed a new record on Wednesday, another view holds that the celebration must wait until 2021.

By Larry Light

Well, stocks finally did it. On Wednesday, the market marked the longest bull run in history, at 3,453 days. The rally that began amid the wreckage of the financial crisis on March 9, 2009, set the record. Or did it?

The traditional way of defining a bear market is a fall of 20% or more. You start counting a bull market at stocks’ lowest point after that slide. The previous bull recordholder ran from October 1990 to March 2000.

Trouble is, the start date of the last bull market champ is under dispute. Some think its actual beginning date should be earlier, following the late-1987 crash. All in all, the 1987-1990 market slump was 19.9%.

Indeed, Sam Stovall, chief investment strategist at CFRA, noted that there is no official body that has ordained that a 20% drop constitutes a bear market. That 20% is merely a convention. Nevertheless, most of the investing world has brushed aside the 0.1 percentage point shortfall. Stovall’s firm is among those that doesn’t.

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If you agree with him, the bull market dates back to 1987. This means our current market has longer to go before it can claim the title—waiting until April 3, 2021, in fact, for a full span of 4,407 days.

Using any measure, this market rise has been bountiful, with the S&P 500 quadrupling since its low point in early 2009. The good thing, from an investor’s viewpoint, is that bull markets last longer than bear ones. By Bespoke Investment Group’s reckoning, since 1927, the average bull run has lasted 981 calendar days, and the average bear period just 296.

Even better, since World War II, the bull/bear market cycles became much longer. The average bull market was 1,651 days and gained 152.4%, Bespoke wrote in a recent report. And the average bear span was 362 days, declining 31.8%. The current bull stampede, Bespoke declared, “is more than double the length and strength of the average bull market.”

So take that, you statistical killjoys. Enjoy it while you can.

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