Australian Ethical bolsters investment committee

Australian Ethical has recruited three industry heavyweights for its investment committee.

The asset owner - which is in merger talks with Christian Super  - has hired Sean Henaghan, the current investment chief at Aurora Capital.

Henaghan spent 14 years at AMP Capital, where he was most recently chief investment officer of the multi-asset group.

Before that, he was a principal at Watson Wyatt.

Another recruit, Steve Rankine, joins from Vantage Infrastructure, where he was a non-executive member of the debt and equity investment committees.

Previously, he was the executive director of infrastructure at Hastings Funds Management and managing director of debt capital markets at Westpac Institutional Bank.

Rankine now sits on several investment committees and boards across funds management, infrastructure, and insurance.

Finally, Sandra McCullagh is a current non-executive director of the Investor Group on Climate Change and a former director of QSuper.

Earlier, she established the ESG equities research capability at Credit Suisse Australia.

The three new hires - that bring the number of committee members to seven - follow the recent hire of Angus Dennis as investment director, who joined from Vanguard Australia.

The move also supports Australian Ethical's ongoing investment in the adviser channel to meet increasing consumer demand for values-based investing after adviser-related flows more than doubled to 145 million over the last year.

This investment includes launching an adviser resource hub and a new online resource to help advisers answer climate change questions.

"Australians are increasingly demanding ethical investment options from their advisers, fund managers, super fund providers, and other investment professionals," said Australian Ethical chief executive John McMurdo.

McMurdo added that it is no longer acceptable for money managers to chase only solid returns.

"We must also achieve solid returns through ethical means on top of delivering financial outcomes.

"For this reason, we have built on our 35 years' experience as Australia's pioneering ethical investor by further shoring up the ethical pedigree of our investment committee and adviser offering.

"We hope to help more advisers take full advantage of the surge of interest in responsible and ethical investing that is accelerating flows to our funds."