Alternatives guru departs ART

Bruce Tomlinson has left his job as a senior portfolio manager at the Australian Retirement Trust.

For nearly 15 years, Tomlinson headed up alternative strategies at Sunsuper which recently merged with QSuper to create a $230 billion megafund.

Before being appointed head of alts in 2019, he ran Sunsuper's liquid and diversification strategies that he established in 2007.

"This was a hard decision to make because I loved working at Sunsuper," Tomlinson posted on LinkedIn. "But the merger - has presented the opportunity to embrace change and renewal, and for that, I am grateful."

Tomlinson plans to "take a break" in Europe during May and June and will look for new investment opportunities upon his return.

In the LinkedIn post, he talks of the highlights of his Sunsuper career. These included building, from scratch, the defensive alternatives program, starting with hedge funds, then private credit, and more recently adding direct mid-risk assets.

"I was very fortunate to work for two outstanding CIOs in David Hartley and Ian Patrick, who both supported and encouraged the development of a (relatively) unconstrained and non-consensus alternatives program," he said.

Commenting on the departure, Australian Retirement Trust investment chief Ian Patrick, said Tomlinson had been a cornerstone of the investment team at Australian Retirement Trust, and Sunsuper before that, for more than 14 years.

"We greatly appreciate his contribution to building capability and expertise across the team, to ultimately improve retirement outcomes for our members," he said.

"We wish him every success in the next chapter of his career."

Tomlinson joined Sunsuper in 2007 from AMP Capital, where he spent eight years as a fund manager and four as the head of investment analytics.

Earlier, he was a quant research manager at S& P Global Ratings.

Last week, Kevin Wong announced his departure from ART to join New Zealand Super.

Wong who was the portfolio manager, dynamic asset allocation as will join the Kiwi sovereign wealth fund as a senior investment strategist.