Coolabah hires super fund PM

A former Australian Catholic Superannuation investment manager has landed at Christopher Joye's Coolabah Capital Investments.

John Phokos joins the asset manager as a portfolio manager and quant analyst.

He joins - after the 12-month break - from Australian Catholic Super, where he served as the investment manager for private markets.

Last year, the asset owner merged with UniSuper to form a $115 billion asset super fund.

The merger came about after ACS failed APRA's performance test in 2021.

At ACS, Phokos managed a multi-billion-dollar credit, fixed-income and alternatives portfolio for seven years to 2022.

He played a key role in research, portfolio construction, and asset and manager selection across fixed-interest, credit, cash and hedge funds.

While at the super fund, Phokos delivered the top ranking for a multi-manager fixed interest product over 1, 3, and 5 years.

Before ACS, John directly managed and oversaw a $2 billion sovereign bond portfolio and $1 billion in cash at WorkCover NSW from 2006 to 2015, and also selected and managed external managers across multiple asset classes, including credit. Earlier, he was a senior performance analyst at JP Morgan, at Commonwealth Bank and Tower.