ESI Super awards five mandates for Australian equities

The A$2.8bn fund has terminated an existing mandate with QIC and divided its domestic equities portfolio between Balanced Equity Management (A$200m), Greencape Capital (A$80m), Hyperion Asset Management (A$80m), JF Capital (A$200m) and Legg Mason (A$80m).

ESI Super chief executive officer Robyn Petrou said the growing size of the fund, combined with ESI Super's internal expertise, had made the mandate agreements possible.

"Now that we have almost A$3bn in funds under management, we have reached a
size where we believe we can achieve better results by taking a more active role,"
she said.

"We have had a strong long standing relationship with QIC, however these mandate
agreements will allow us to better control the investment strategy as we work directly
with the fund managers.

"A key goal is of these mandates is to allow for better after-tax management so that
these tax savings can be enjoyed by our members.

"Apart from better after- tax returns, we also anticipate substantial savings through a
reduction in external management fees."

ESI Super, which has 21,000 members, is currently undergoing a merger with fellow Australian energy industry superannuation fund SPEC Super to create a new A$3.4bn fund (Global Pensions: 30 July, 2010).

The merger, which is expected to be completed by the end of March 2011, will see the creation of one of Australia's largest energy industry funds.