After 17 years at MLC, Ms Gregory joined the Future Fund in 2019 to lead private equity investments, before becoming deputy CIO in June 2022. Blue Owl, less known outside the US, expects her relationships with Australia’s investment community and experience with private markets to open doors for the company.
Slow burn
Blue Owl works with sovereign wealth funds such as Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala and US pension funds including the California Public Employees Retirement System. It finances private equity-backed acquisitions, acquires stakes in private firms and invests in real estate. The company went public through a special purpose acquisition vehicle in May 2021.
It was spawned from the merger of investment firms Owl Rock and Dyal Capital. The tie-up combined ex-Lehman Brothers dealmaker and Dyal founder Michael Rees, former KKR veteran Marc Lipschultz, and Doug Ostrover, the Credit Suisse banker who founded Blackstone’s credit arm, GSO Capital Partners.
Super funds’ assets rose to $3.7 trillion last December, up 3.8 per cent from a quarter earlier, data from the Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia showed.
As they manage more assets, the country’s biggest funds have gone beyond local investments to juice members’ returns. Some, including AustralianSuper and Aware Super, have also outlined plans to hire hundreds of people in the US and Europe to get a piece of co-investments in private equity and infrastructure.
But getting Australian institutional investors to cut cheques worth north of $100 million is a slow burn, Mr Clarke said. It can take two to three years of meetings before the likes of AusSuper or Future Fund signed the dotted line.
“I think where a lot of US firms get it wrong is they hear about the super market, that there is a compulsory savings rate, and think money is just falling from trees. But they go over there, and do not understand the cadence of the dialogue, get frustrated and give up,” Mr Clarke said.
