By Muskan Arora
The Guardians of NZ Superannuation, who oversee $75 billion New Zealand Superannuation Fund, named Alex Bacchus as the acting CIO on Friday.
As the search for a permanent CIO is expected to begin in the coming weeks, Bacchus succeeds CIO Stephen Gilmore, who left the fund to join CalPERS as its CIO, according to an announcement in April. Bacchus was serving as the head of strategic tilting, which is a dynamic asset allocation strategy based on long-term fundamental valuations at NZ Super Fund. The strategy covers various country level markets across equities, credit, currencies and rates.
According to his LinkedIn profile, the role includes leading the team, contribution to the investment committee, developing the quantitative investment strategy, investment signals, allocation of risk, and managing market exposures for the strategy. He has been at NZ Super for almost sixteen years.
Prior to joining the Fund in 2009, he worked as director of at Goldman Sachs and as a vice president and structured credit derivatives trader at Merrill Lynch.
Amid staff changes in the Fund, Jo Townsend will be appointed as CEO of NZ super succeeding Matt Whineray, as announced in March. Whineray stepped down last December.
As of April 30, NZ Super has returned 13.65% (1-year return), 8.49% (5-year return) and 10.22% (10-year return).
