Rest has appointed Richard Mercado to the role of head of internal global equities as part of the industry super fund’s ongoing plan to internalise certain investment strategies.
According to Rest, Mr Mercado will play a key role in establishing and building out a dedicated internal global equities management capability. He will be responsible for implementing an active, fundamental stock-picking strategy at the super fund.
Mr Mercado was formerly a partner at Comgest in Paris, where he served as a high-conviction portfolio manager specialising in global equities.
He was previously senior portfolio manager responsible for a North American equities fund at USS Investment Management and also held roles at F&C Investments in London, Capital Partners, and AMP Capital Investors.
Rest chief investment officer (CIO) Andrew Lill said that, by expanding the fund’s internal investment management capabilities to its global equities portfolio, Rest aims to provide further value to its members.
“We are committed to continuing to deliver strong long-term returns and keeping our fees as low as possible. Our core strategy investment fees and costs for the 2022–23 financial year were the lowest they’d been in recent years,” he said.
“Using our scale and expertise to build further internal capability aims to help us realise further value for our members. This is another demonstration of the continued evolution of Rest’s whole of fund approach.”
Mr Lill said that Rest has found that internal management is able to provide additional benefits and insights which complement the fund’s work with external managers.
“This gives us a more holistic view of how companies are contributing to our overall portfolio and our sustainability goals,” he added.
The Rest CIO suggested that Mr Mercado’s “proven track record” made him ideally suited to develop and lead the fund’s new internal global equities capability.
“He adds further depth and knowledge to the expertise we’ve been building within our investments team in recent years. We are delighted to welcome Richard to the team and back to Australia after many years abroad,” he concluded.
As at 30 June, Rest had more than 1.96 million members and around $75 billion in funds under management, making it ones of the country’s largest profit-to-member super funds.
Jon Bragg
Jon Bragg is a journalist for Momentum Media's Investor Daily, nestegg and ifa. He enjoys writing about a wide variety of financial topics and issues and exploring the many implications they have on all aspects of life.
