Former Goldman, KKR execs bring $216b investment firm to Australia
One of the fastest-growing asset managers in the United States is targeting Australia’s $3.4 trillion superannuation industry, tasking two executives with tapping into the country’s institutional investment community and exposing it to the North American credit market and real estate sector.
New York-based James Clarke, a Sydney Uni alum, will lead Blue Owl Capital’s efforts to win over institutional investment firms.
Australians James Clarke, Blue Owl Capital’s global head of institutional client services, and ex-Blackstone and Goldman Sachs managing director Marc Pillemer, visited Sydney and Melbourne last month to introduce investors to the investment manager, little-known locally but with $US138 billion ($216 billion) in assets.
“The Australian market, in my mind, is littered with American funds going over there and thinking they are going to walk away with bags of money. And we could not disagree more,” Mr Clarke, a University of Sydney graduate, said.
“They want true partnership, co-investment. We want an alignment of interest and favourable terms,” he said, comparing the scale of Australian super funds to Canadian and Middle Eastern equivalents.
The trillion-dollar super industry has led peers like Ares Management to Australia, a market where it is helping finance TPG Capital’s takeover of funerals company InvoCare. Super funds, meanwhile, are growing and must extract significant returns with millions of citizens’ money. To achieve this, they are increasingly looking abroad for places to park their cash.
Blue Owl has employed Sydney-based John Wilson as a senior adviser to help it better understand Australia’s investment community. Mr Wilson is another Goldman Sachs alum and a former Rugby Australia director. The
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