Print industry super fund Media Super scored third place in the 2018/19 financial year, achieving an 8.8 per cent growth over the year, its performance beating 184 of the 187 super funds in Australia in an impressive result.
Top spot went to Uni Super with 9.9 per cent, followed by Q Super with 9.7 percent. Industry fund average was 6.8 per cent. Every one of the top ten performing funds were not-for-profit industry funds.
Media Super has some 80,000 members with $5.5bn in its fund, making it a mid-sized fund. Its CEO is Graeme Russell, who has been in the role for the past six years. Russell credits the fund's focus on members, along with its investment strategy, for its leading performance. It makes large investments in both unlisted infrastructure and commercial property.
Russell said, “We are reaping the rewards of some great calls we made five years ago to set our strategy, rebalance the portfolio, and stick with it. We have good managers in place and a well structured portfolio.”
The positive figures were somewhat unexpected at the start of the year as funds had lost about five per cent in the final quarter of last year. However booming stock markets around the world enabled some of the funds to recover.