QIC: portfolio management will drive Australia sales

Institutional investors in Australia are preparing to re-orientate their portfolios and sell stakes, according to a principal at the $57bn investment firm.

Investors repositioning their portfolios will continue to drive secondaries sales in Australia as the market there grows, according to an executive at the Queensland Investment Corporation (QIC).

Phillip Cummins
Phillip Cummins

Phillip Cummins, a principal in the Australian alternative investment firm’s global private equity team, told sister publication Agri Investor that it uses the secondaries market for strategic reasons, and that many other institutional investors in the region do the same.

“We’re less of an opportunistic and more of a strategic secondaries player in terms of making sure we’ve got portfolios correctly positioned,” Cummins said. QIC’s 2014 sale of around $1 billion worth of private equity stakes on behalf of one of its pension clients was done for portfolio re-positioning reasons, he said.

The Australian secondaries market which will grow, according to Cummins.

“There are a lot of institutions out there that are looking to re-orientate their portfolio,” he said. “It’s more about portfolio management and positioning as oppose to being opportunistic buyers or sellers. I think we are going to see more of it in Australia.”

QIC was created in 1991 by the Queensland government and had A$78 billion ($57 billion; €50 billion) in assets under management on 31 December, according to its website.

Clare Pennington contributed to this story.