Insto roundup: Future Fund selling private equity; AIA poaches new CEO from Ping An

AUSTRALIA 

 

Future Fund, Australia's sovereign wealth fund, is in the midst of selling off a “large slice” of private equity assets on the secondary market as it looks to free up more capital in the event of a drawdown. The fund currently has about 16% in private equity and about one third in public market equities. 

 

David Neal, chief executive officer of the A$167 billion ($108.62 billion) Future Fund, said his team had struggled to make a dent in the portfolio despite “quite aggressively” selling off other private assets like the UK’s Gatwick Airport, because prices kept going up. He said the net cash flow from the holdings was $6 billion over the last 12 months and would be the same again this year.

“If anyone wants a large slice of really high-quality private equity let me know because we are looking,” Neal told delegates at Investment Magazine’s Fiduciary Investors Symposium in the Yarra Valley.  “We have a process underway at the moment of doing a secondary sale of private equity, it is essentially a rebalancing trade.”