Cbus adds new roles to investment team

Cbus has announced a string of new roles in its investment team as it continues to bring assets in-house.

Brett Chatfield, Cbus deputy investment chief, confirmed that the new roles support the industry fund's internalisation and total portfolio approach.

"Our members continue to benefit from our investments internalisation program, which exceeds expectations and continues to reduce our investment costs," he said.

Firstly, the super fund for construction workers has hired Myooran Mahalingam as a senior portfolio manager of global equities portfolio construction.

Mahalingam will lead portfolio construction of the global equities and emerging market equities portfolios.

He spent over 20 years at MLC and was the portfolio manager for the global equity and listed property strategies.

Mahalingam has held this role since 2004, starting at MLC three years earlier in the capital markets research team.

Before joining what is now Insignia Financial Group, he worked as an actuarial consultant at Deloitte.

Mahalingam starts with Cbus in November.

His appointment follows Anna Weickart moving into the newly created role of managing Cbus' expanding equities manager research program.

Weickart will also continue to be the portfolio manager of Cbus' climate change portfolio.

Meantime, Jonathon Meagher has joined the infrastructure team as a senior analyst while Adrian Dark has joined the property team as an associate director.

Meagher - who will focus on transactional activities and asset management - arrived from Commonwealth Superannuation Corporation.

Dark has 14 years of experience in the property sector, most recently with Citi Research, where he led the fund's coverage of the Australian listed property sector.

He will focus on managing the existing portfolio and new investment opportunities.

Finally, Ashleigh Baxter joins Cbus as investment manager of direct debit.

In the new role, Baxter will focus on managing existing debt transactions and sourcing new debt deals for the internal Cbus direct debt portfolio, which now stands at $1 billion.

Before joining the super fund, Baxter spent ten years in National Australia Bank's debt capital markets team.