Cbus Appoints Deputy Investment Chief | Chief Investment Officer

Cbus, Australia’s Construction and Building Unions Superannuation fund, has named a new deputy CIO to replace Alexandra Campbell, who vacated the role last July after four years.

Leigh Gavin was promoted to deputy CIO after serving as head of portfolio strategies since October 2023. Gavin oversaw the super fund’s strategy to internalize more than half its assets under management and look after global partnerships to access new investments.

Gavin previously worked as head of investment model design at AustralianSuper. Prior to that, Gavin spent five years as CIO of LUCRF Super, the labor union superannuation fund acquired by AustralianSuper, following a long career advising super funds at Frontier Advisors.

Cbus CIO Brett Chatfield said the appointment of Gavin reflects the fund’s growth ambitions to build out internal strategies.

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“Leigh has done an exceptional job continuing the build out of internal equity strategies, and enhanced key strategic portfolio initiatives and business management activities,” Chatfield said in a statement. “We are very well placed to continue the successful build out of our internal capabilities under Leigh.”

The super fund expects its internal investment capabilities to grow to manage about 50% of the portfolio within three years.

“Leigh will continue to look at ways we can bring further strategies in-house as part of Cbus’ five-year investment strategy,” Chatfield added.

Gavin commented in the statement that Cbus is “entering a ‘Goldilocks period’ where we are small enough to take advantage of a range of opportunities and large enough to be achieving real economies of scale for members.”

He added: “We see plenty of scope to roll out new internal strategies, our portfolio construction and [defensive asset allocation] programs are really taking shape and we are well placed to take advantage of private markets opportunities. I’m excited to be assisting Brett to deliver on our current strategy and turning an eye to what the next 10 or 20 years will look like.”

This article originally appeared in our sister publication, Financial Standard, which, like CIO, is owned by ISS STOXX.

The Ontario Municipal Employees’ Retirement System, the pension plan for municipal sector employees in the Canadian province of Ontario, announced Monday that the fund achieved an 8.3% return on its investments in 2024, exceeding its benchmark of 7.5%.

Assets of the pension fund grew to C$138.2 billion ($96.7 billion) at the end of 2024, up from C$128.6 billion at the end of 2023. The pension fund’s funded status increased to 98% from 97%.

Equities were the fund’s highest-performing asset class, followed by private credit. The asset classes returned 18.8% and 12.6%, respectively. Next was private equity, which returned 9.5% in the calendar year. Infrastructure returned 8.8%, public credit returned 6.0%, and government bonds returned 1.0%. Real estate, the fund’s only negative-performing asset class, returned negative 4.9%.

“OMERS public equity investments delivered double-digit performance supported by strong contributions from private credit and infrastructure,” said Jonathan Simmons, the OMERS chief financial officer and chief strategy officer, in a statement. “Our net investment results benefitted from our active strategy to maintain currency exposure to the U.S. dollar.”

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The fund allocates 23% of its portfolio to infrastructure, 20% to both public equity and private equity, 13% to real estate, 12% to both public credit and private credit, 9% to government bonds and 9% to cash and funding. The OMERS asset mix includes physical and derivative exposures, according to the fund’s 2023 report. The fund includes its net economic derivative exposure within each asset class and presents a corresponding offset in the cash and funding category.

“Our real estate assets continue to generate strong operating income, but returns were held back due to lower valuations. Our asset mix continued to shift toward a higher exposure to fixed income, where return opportunities remain attractive,” Simmons continued in the statement. “We expanded our overall use of leverage as we continued to use debt prudently to enhance our investment returns.”

Geographically, approximately 53% of the fund’s assets were invested in the U.S., as of December 31, 2024. Another 19% of the fund’s assets were invested in Canada, with another 17% in Europe. Asia-Pacific and the rest of the world accounted for 11% of all assets.

OMERS also announced the carbon intensity of the investment portfolio has been reduced by 58% from 2019 portfolio emissions. The pension fund also increased its green investments to $23 billion last year; OMERS aims for $30 billion in such investments by 2030.

The Toronto-based fund counts 640,000 members across 1,000 employers, including union and nonunion municipal employees and employees of school boards, local boards, emergency services, transit systems, children’s aid societies and electrical utilities in Ontario.