CIO of $168 Billion Australia Fund Quits for #AbuDhabi Rival - Bloomberg

CIO of $168 Billion Australia Fund Quits for Abu Dhabi Rival - Bloomberg

Ben Samild, the investment chief of Australia’s A$252 billion ($168 billion) sovereign wealth fund, has resigned to take up a senior position at a Middle East rival.

Samild will be joining the Abu Dhabi Investment Council as its chief strategist, according to people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified as the details aren’t yet public. ADIC didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The move comes as the unit of Abu Dhabi wealth fund Mubadala Investment Co. bolsters its senior ranks and seeks to ramp up global investments. ADIC has recently hired Alain Carrier — the former chief executive officer of private-markets firm Bregal Investments — as head of private equity.

Samild joined Australia’s Future Fund in 2013 and has held the position of chief investment officer for just over two years, the fund said in a statement Monday. His deputy Hugh Murray has been appointed interim CIO while the fund undertakes a recruitment process.

Samild has championed the Future Fund’s so-called joined-up whole portfolio approach to managing money, which avoids a typical strategic asset allocation in favor of investment themes expressed across asset classes. The strategy helped the fund return 9.1% in the three years through June, beating its 8% target for the period.

The objective is to own “the best portfolio we can possibly hold today,” regardless of which bucket the assets may fall into, Samild said in a Q&A with Bridgewater Associates last year. “That’s essentially a mentality of a blank canvas, and competition for capital, and constant evaluation,” he said.

The Future Fund was formed in 2006 to improve the Australian government’s long-term financial position and has since become its largest financial asset. The portfolio has included multi-billion-dollar hedge fund allocations to the likes of Man Group and Citadel, with more than half its assets in private markets.

Chief Executive Officer Raphael Arndt last week said the fund had slightly reduced exposure to US markets and was monitoring President Donald Trump’s pressure on the Federal Reserve, while posting a 12.2% gain for the year through June. US investments remain the fund’s biggest holding.

Samild was previously in charge of the Future Fund’s hedge fund portfolio, which now comprises around 15% of overall investments. Before that, he had worked for a hedge fund for around a decade, and also had a stint at pension fund LUCRF Super, which later merged with AustralianSuper, the nation’s biggest pension fund.
Behavioral Bias

Samild initially intended to become a cognitive neuropsychologist, he said on the Money Maze podcast last year. However, a supervisor in his university’s psychology department imparted an interest in behavioral finance that eventually led him into the industry.

He’s helped produce Future Fund research that has informed the portfolio, including a 2021 paper charting a “new investment order,” based on expectations for elevated inflation, geopolitical tensions and a walking back of globalization partly due to conflict between the US and China.

The fund published a paper extending some of these ideas last year, which stated that government bonds have become less reliable as a diversifying hedge against equity risk and that certain hedge fund strategies may be more appropriate.