Well-known NZ responsible investment advocate, David Woods, has been named as the first independent director of the Te Puna Hapori Infrastructure Fund.
Woods will provide governance oversight to the newly launched impact fund spearheaded by Trust Waikato and managed by Australian specialist investment firm, Brightlight.
He also holds board roles with NZ Green Investment Finance, and the NZ National Advisory Board for Impact Investing.
In a statement Woods said: “[The Te Puna Hapori Fund] is a truly commercial scale impact fund opportunity that will deliver solid risk adjusted market rate returns for investors alongside meaningful and measurable benefit to marginalised communities around the country.”
Partly underwritten by Trust Waikato, the Te Puna Hapori fund was established as a private debt vehicle to back ‘community-driven essential services infrastructure’ while delivering commercial returns to investors.
Dennis Turton, Trust Waikato chief, said in May this year: “The sector focus of the fund includes education, health, water infrastructure, community hubs and housing.”
The fund is targeting an initial capital-raising of $50 million, to be sourced from a range of wholesale investors, with the first round expected to close at the end of this year before allocating to projects early in 2021.
Simba Marekera, Brightlight head of investment solutions, said in the release that the fund has “investees lined up and we are ready to go”.
“As soon as we complete our capital raise we can call on capital to activate a wide range of much needed community infrastructure at a critical time in the market where indicators of deprivation are unfortunately increasing due to the impact of COVID19,” Marekera said.
Brightlight is also expanding into NZ on the back of the Te Puna Hapori appointment and a consultancy gig with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. The Sydney-headquartered impact manager will name a NZ country head “shortly”, the release says.
In other moves last week, former AMP Capital NZ head of sales, Greg McMaster, will return to the grind next month in a newly created role with Auckland firm Salt Funds Management.
Following an eight-year career with the Wellington-based manager, McMaster resigned from AMP Capital in August on the same day as NZ chief, Bevan Graham. While McMaster exited almost immediately, Graham formally departs AMP Capital – which has seen major staff disruption in its Australian headquarters this year – next January.
Roger Clayton, Salt chief operating officer, said McMaster would take over client-facing duties currently shared between himself and company founders, Paul Harrison and Matthew Goodson.
“Greg will be taking control of all our key client relationships,” Clayton said.
And one of those relationships would be with AMP Capital, which outsourced a large chunk of its active NZ equities management to Salt in 2015. The now $2 billion plus Salt also has a large mandate with the Westpac-owned BT Funds.
Meanwhile across the ditch, the $9 billion plus Milford Asset Management has hired former Zurich Australia chief distribution officer as head of its Australian business.
Australian press reported last week that Brooks would assume the position in December, working alongside Milford chief investment officer, Wayne Gentle.
The Auckland-based Milford chief, Mark Ryland, said in a release: “We have a really exciting opportunity to significantly grow the business in Australia… [Brooks] will build on the strong foundations in place where the Australian investment team manage over $2 billion in Australian equities.”
While Milford established a beach-head in Sydney some time ago, the NZ boutique began its serious assault on the Australian market late in 2017. The manager launched the Milford Australian Absolute Return Growth Fund in October 2017 – its first product domiciled in that market – aiming to repeat the success of the NZ flagship Active Growth Fund across the dtich.
Milford has an investment team of about 10 in Australia (servicing both sides of the Tasman) and a distribution department of two, headed by Regan van Berlo.
Unlike the NZ market, where Milford has a large direct investor base, the manager is targeting growth among Australian independent financial advisory networks.