Matt Whineray, former CEO of New Zealand’s “Super Fund”, and Knut Kjaer, who was in charge of managing Norway’s financial wealth between 1998 and 2007, have been appointed to an investment committee that will oversee Ireland’s new funds.
They are among six appointments made by the NTMA to the committee that will help decide how the billions going into the Future Ireland Fund and the Infrastructure, Climate and Nature Fund (ICNF) will be invested.
The two funds were set up earlier this year by the Irish government in order to salt away the windfall corporation tax revenues that have been flowing into the exchequer. By the end of this year the two will have combined assets of over €10bn.
The appointments include two board members of the NTMA – John S. Daly, who will chair the investment committee, and Geraldine Jones. The four external members of the committee all have international expertise in investment and corporate governance.
As well as helping to set up the New Zealand “Super Fund”, Matt Whineray is the chair of FirstCape Group, a wealth management firm overseeing $50bn in assets. Knut Kjaer is also chair of the supervisory board of APG Asset Management, which manages Europe’s largest pension fund, ABP, based in the Netherlands.
He was on the commission that managed the now-defunct Irish National Pensions Reserve Fund, an earlier long-term cash reservoir that was cleaned out during the financial crisis.
They will be joined by Anne Gram, who is a board member at ABP, and has been chief investment officer at asset managers such as Robeco. The sixth appointee is Deborah Reidy, a former director of investment consulting at Aon Hewitt.
Last month the NTMA appointed Rebekah Brady as director of a new Future Ireland Funds unit, which will manage the two funds. The idea behind the Future Ireland Fund is to pay for the additional healthcare and pension costs that will be needed from 2041 onwards due to Ireland’s ageing demographics. It is expected to contain €100 billion by 2035
The ICNF, the smaller of the two new funds, is designed to bolster government expenditure if there is a significant deterioration in the economic or fiscal position of the State, and money from it will be assigned to some environmental projects between 2026 and 2030.
The NTMA has previously said that, until a long-term investment strategy is approved, the interim plan “should reflect a low risk appetite, permitting only highly rated liquid securities that have a low degree of inherent risk.”
Frank O’Connor, the NTMA chief executive, said the appointments were a significant step forward in the establishment of the Future Ireland funds. “They will bring highly valuable expertise in global markets to the new investment committee and will play an important role in the development and implementation of the long-term investment strategies for each fund,” he said.
“This will be particularly important for the Future Ireland Fund as we look to 2041 and beyond.”