Home ListingAugust 28, 2013

Who Needs Fund Managers? New Equities Head at ADIA

<em>ADIA appoints LGIM equities man to in-house team.</em>

Reported by Featured Author

(August 28, 2013) — The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA) has appointed the former head of Asia Pacific equities at Legal & General Investment Management to run an internal team.

The sovereign wealth fund has brought Suresh Sadasivan on board as head of Asia, ex Japan, it announced today. He will replace Lars Roemer Sorensen, who left the fund a few months ago after more than a five year tenure.

In its latest annual report, ADIA said it had brought five percentage points of its considerable assets under the auspices of its in-house investment team. At the end of 2012, some 75% of its assets were managed externally, down from approximately 80% a year earlier.

ADIA does not disclose its assets, but they are estimated to be around $627 billion, making the shift roughly equivalent to $30 billion brought internally. Additionally, ADIA increased its headcount by around 10% over the year from 1,275 at the end of 2011 to around 1,400 in December 2012.

Sadasivan’s appointment is the latest in a list of significant hires made by the fund. In May, John McCarthy, a former Deutsche Bank managing director and global head of its infrastructure unit, joined the fund to lead its push in the sector, following the appointment of Gregory Eckersley as global head of internal equities in January and Colm Lanigan as head of principal investments in its private equities department in October last year.