legalsuper appoints finance chief

The industry fund for the legal community has hired a finance chief but is still in the market for a new chief investment officer to replace Norman Zhang who resigned last month.

legalsuper chief executive Luke Symons has announced the appointment of Michael Gogorosis to the fund's newly created position of chief financial officer.

Gogorosis joins from Vision Super, where he was deputy chief financial officer.

Before that, he was the financial controller at Equip Super where he managed the $5 billion merger with Rio Tinto Super.

Symons said the creation of the new role is to further drive excellence in strategic operations across the business with a strong focus on the super fund's financial decision-making and management to support the growth agenda.

"Michael has direct superannuation fund experience combined with broader financial services and asset management experience gained both in Melbourne and London," Symons said.

"Michael was a standout candidate in a highly competitive field and brings with him a combination of outstanding professional competencies, personal values and academic qualifications all aligned with legalsuper's current growth and innovation agenda," he said.

The appointment follows Zhang's resignation.

He will join Koda Capital in December.

At the time, Symons said he was looking for a new investment chief and a finance chief.

The chief executive noted that legalsuper's MySuper balanced option, where the majority of the fund's members are invested, recorded a solid return of 7.92 per cent for the year to 30 June 2023 - delivering a top-quartile performance when measured over the past two years combined.

"It recorded a solid return of 7.69 per cent over the last three years, outperforming the SuperRatings median of 7.39 per cent by 0.3 per cent through an economic cycle which saw continued significant investment market volatility," he added.

"Importantly, this continues a longer-term trend of outperformance, with legalsuper's MySuper balanced option returns having been higher than the SuperRatings median over 3, 5, 7 and 10 years."