AustralianSuper, Australia’s largest superannuation fund, is planning to invest an additional A$40 billion ($26 billion; €22 billion) in its home country over the next five years.
The move comes even as the A$400 billion superfund makes a push into its main overseas markets, the US and Europe.
AustralianSuper chief executive Paul Schroder announced the earmarked capital at the National Press Club in Canberra on Wednesday, declaring that the superfund is “ready to invest”.
“If you’re a company with a good idea – and there are plenty – or if you’re a government with a good plan, our door is open,” he said.
Schroder listed three of the areas in which AustralianSuper is interested in allocating the A$40 billion: the corporate bond market, “innovative businesses”, and “critical infrastructure that supports Australia’s future”.
The additional capital would see AustralianSuper’s allocation to Australian investments grow to a forecast A$250 billion by 2030 – about 9 percent of Australia’s current GDP.
Schroder said it makes sense for superfunds with such scale to invest overseas, pointing to ports, airports, roads, energy infrastructure and data centres among the most compelling international opportunities.
AustralianSuper has proved its interest in the latter through recent investments, both in the US through its $1.5 billion commitment to DigitalBridge-owned data centre platform DataBank, and in Europe through a €1.5 billion minority stake in DigitalBridge’s Vantage EMEA data centre platform.
However, Schroder also said superannuation has a role to play in a “national renewal” of Australia’s economy in areas like housing, the energy transition and artificial intelligence.
“People will need shelter, power will need transmission, data will require storage,” Schroder said.
“They’re all multibillion, multi-decade tasks, and we’re interested in opportunities to provide capital, provided it’s responsible and provided it’s at scale.”
Schroder said the government should not dictate what superannuation invests in, possibly in response to treasurer Jim Chalmers’ comments last year about unlocking private capital in “national priorities” like housing and clean energy.
“It would be a disaster for members if governments tried to tell us what to invest in,” he said.
On the other hand, Schroder was open to the government providing superfunds with opportunities.
The governments, he said, could build assets with a plan to sell or lease them to long-term investors like superfunds later in the asset’s life.
“Governments could then build, secure in the knowledge that it’s more likely than not that there would be a willing buyer at the right price and at the right time.”
An AustralianSuper spokesperson declined to provide a breakdown of the earmarked capital, saying it will be determined through the superfund’s usual asset allocation process over the next five years.
As of 1 August, AustralianSuper’s default Balanced option has a 9.5 percent allocation to infrastructure.