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Brendan O'Connor

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70
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2026-02-05
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2026-02-05
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  1. “Of first registered mortgage protections for the lender, very low corruption. So it's a safe environment for them to deploy capital that's giving them a return series, probably very diversifying to the return series they get in the US, Canada, Europe or elsewhere. Further, the big companies in Australia, the big four banks, Telstra, the big telecommunications company, exclude BHP and Rio, those big companies are X-growth. They are growing very slowly with maybe two to three percent EPS growth over the years ahead. The real growth in the Australian marketplace comes from that small and mid-cap sector. There's market structure that means that we're being able to generate alpha from a section in the market that an offshore investor perhaps just is less familiar with. Part of the answer to that is being able to explain some unique”

    2026-02-05 · Capital Allocators · Brendan O'Connor – Alpha Opportunities in Australia at Regal Partners (EP.485) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “I think that is a sign of things to come because from a world perspective there are perhaps many parallels between the environment we're in today from a commodity and resource perspective as what occurred in the late 60s and 70s. We're in a world with high for longer, sticky inflation, certainly a breakdown of the free trade agreements that were happening so easily previously there's a lot of re-onshoring. Unfortunately, we've seen the best of the geopolitical environment from a security perspective. That all points to being a more inflationary, higher cost security environment, which is very bullish resources. I think you'll find that offshore investor that doesn't have exposure to Australia can do so in a AAA rated country, democratic and one of rule of law, very strong laws in respect to”

    2026-02-05 · Capital Allocators · Brendan O'Connor – Alpha Opportunities in Australia at Regal Partners (EP.485) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “Australia uniquely provides. Diversifying to what you'd find elsewhere. If you have a look at the Australian marketplace, financials and materials, materials think of resource companies, represent about 55% of the market. That's very different to many other equi markets around the world. The nature of the Australian economy, we're probably the 15th largest economy in the world. We sit just below South Korea from an economy size. We've got half the population of South Korea as an example, so a GDP per capita is double theirs, just to sort of frame it. As I said, is dominated by some industries that are unique to Australia. And the best example of that is resources. Resources today represents about 25% of the equity market. If you go back to the late 60s and 70s, resources as a percentage of the Australian market was as much as 65%.”

    2026-02-05 · Capital Allocators · Brendan O'Connor – Alpha Opportunities in Australia at Regal Partners (EP.485) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “After 10 years at Challenger, I was looking for my next challenge, no pun intended, and I met Phil King. Phil is one of the founders of Regal Funds Management. He started the business in 2004 with his brother Andrew. Phil was always the chief investment officer, Andrew on back offs and distribution. Andrew had retired from the business in early 16. Phil wasn't ready to hang up the boots and turn it into a family office. He wanted to build a business. He was looking for a leader to help him take the business through its next phase of growth. I immediately saw the potential in being able to harness what was an incredible track record of long short equity investing with a robust technology platform that they built to be able to turn that into a diversified alternatives manager that offered a range of investment strategies.”

    2026-02-05 · Capital Allocators · Brendan O'Connor – Alpha Opportunities in Australia at Regal Partners (EP.485) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “Has an investment experience that is consistent with the offer document or the fundraising. It was very much a fiduciary experience, is very different to the bank or life insurance balance sheet experience. How did you end up coming over to...”

    2026-02-05 · Capital Allocators · Brendan O'Connor – Alpha Opportunities in Australia at Regal Partners (EP.485) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “In the US Taken over Of the largest public asset managers. Curious what you see as. Strengths Insurance company with fixed annuities managing assets. It's an oil and water culture in many respects. The life insurer is a ruthless IRR investor. It has a bias to its IRR to cash paying on a regular basis because it's trying to match its cash flows as much as its assets and liabilities. But ultimately it is an investor and rule only to itself. A asset management business is built on trust and you're acting in the client's best interest at all times. Your client in this regard being the investor of the fund is very different to the investment you might make if it's a loan to a corporate, for example, the better analogy might be when I was at a bank. All you cared about was getting your money back on that loan. Today it's about making sure the investor in that fund that may have provided that loan has the right experience. What I mean by that is”

    2026-02-05 · Capital Allocators · Brendan O'Connor – Alpha Opportunities in Australia at Regal Partners (EP.485) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “Spent a bulk of my time there as CFO for the asset management business. So the asset management business covered a prudentially regulated life insurance business. On one side, it had assets that it invested in across real estate equities, fixed income, infrastructure, private equity. And on the liability side were fixed rate, fixed-term annuities to Australian retirees. The simple business was that the better the return you could make on each of those assets, given you had a fixed rate on the liability side, that was just profit coming to the shareholder. The investment committee process, the asset allocation, then on the other side of the business was a traditional fiduciary funds management business that allowed portfolio managers to run their own investment strategy, but backed by challenge limited. I cut my teeth from an asset management perspective through that time.”

    2026-02-05 · Capital Allocators · Brendan O'Connor – Alpha Opportunities in Australia at Regal Partners (EP.485) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “My reference to little did I know what was about to happen because obviously the global financial crisis bit quite hard in Australia. That was a wild ride in the early days of Challenger. Would you end up doing”

    2026-02-05 · Capital Allocators · Brendan O'Connor – Alpha Opportunities in Australia at Regal Partners (EP.485) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “Americans because that was the peak of their power. We bought one of the asset managers of bankers trust, the old bankers trust investment bank had a large funds management business in Australia. And I finished my time there on the executive committee of the financial markets team of Westpac in 2006 with the world awash with liquidity. I clearly had no idea as to what was about to happen. And credit spreads at all-time lows. I was thinking that these asset managers I was curious about and I was approached to join a company called Challenger Limited, which was a large life insurance silly annuities that had a funds management business as well. So I jumped at the chance to move out of the banking industry into a very fast growing asset management industry in Australia.”

    2026-02-05 · Capital Allocators · Brendan O'Connor – Alpha Opportunities in Australia at Regal Partners (EP.485) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “Got interested in what was happening in the banking sector. I became increasingly curious about them, and I applied for a job at Westpac, one of the big four banks, Australia's oldest bank. The role I went into was called Group Controller. It had the potential to be quite a dry role because its title ultimately meant that you were head of accounting policy. But it gave me great insights to the operations of one of Australia's largest companies. It had over 150 years of history at that stage. There had been some great leaders, the leader of Westpac at the time was a guy called David Morgan. They had survived that banking crisis in the early 1990s when there were hedge funds on the register came through. And it was growing extremely well. I took that as a great learning experience. In a five-year period, we sold a very profitable but low-growth finance business called AGC to GE Capital. That was an interesting experience negotiating with a bunch of...”

    2026-02-05 · Capital Allocators · Brendan O'Connor – Alpha Opportunities in Australia at Regal Partners (EP.485) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “Had made some very significant micro and macroeconomic reforms through the 1980s that ultimately spurned a great evolution of the finance industry, in particular through the 90s, the big four banks, a bit of an oligopoly, a little bit like the Canadian banking system. They dominated the marketplace. I became increasingly curious about banks. And despite a very idiosyncratic event in the early 1990s where we had a bit of a banking crisis, they recovered from that quite well. And by the late 90s, 2000s, the big four banks were the dominant part of the Australian financial system. Interestingly, credit growth in Australia was growing at 10% per annum and hadn't been less than 10% for many, many years. And so you had this huge growth in leverage coming into the household sector that drove the profits of the banks. Where did that take you in terms of the roles that”

    2026-02-05 · Capital Allocators · Brendan O'Connor – Alpha Opportunities in Australia at Regal Partners (EP.485) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “I loved KPMG. It didn't have high conviction as to where I wanted to spend my time from career. I was just really interested in being in the city, working with people of a similar age to myself. There's a big cohort of graduates that have came on through. And there's a career path where I could go million different places. So I did my chartered accounting exam and spent my time learning about businesses and understanding the business world. I'd always been curious about businesses, how they operated, and I'd had a admiration for entrepreneurs people who have actually taken a risk and set up a business themselves, as opposed to administering a business that someone had built many generations before. Perhaps that's the next thread as to where I ultimately moved them because the more I became interested in the world of business, the more I started to read more about capital markets, and particularly capital flows, I looked at Australia.”

    2026-02-05 · Capital Allocators · Brendan O'Connor – Alpha Opportunities in Australia at Regal Partners (EP.485) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “I jokingly say that my wife and I are very compatible and slow learners. We weren't striving for a particular number. It just happened that way and you can't imagine life any differently. My eldest is 25, my youngest is 16. Four of them are in the workforce, one at university and one at school. Back through. Work experience at KPMG Where that set you out from there.”

    2026-02-05 · Capital Allocators · Brendan O'Connor – Alpha Opportunities in Australia at Regal Partners (EP.485) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “I found that in the country in particular, and maybe it was my age, I didn't notice so much the social aspect of what was occurring. The older I got, and particularly as we moved to Sydney, Sydney being a big city with edgier situations, I could start to see it took a toll on some of the things that he was dealing with. That created a degree of stress, but he was pretty good at being able to switch that off and turn around and just be a loving father to the seven children, which is great.”

    2026-02-05 · Capital Allocators · Brendan O'Connor – Alpha Opportunities in Australia at Regal Partners (EP.485) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “It's one of those questions where you don't know what the alternative is, but you piece it together as you grow up. So I had five sisters and one brother. My brother is eight years older than me, and I desperately wanted to have a closer relationship with my brother growing up when someone's eight and then they're 16. That's a big age gap. I used to marvel at those families that would catch up with and they may have one child and they would always come around to our place, have a play in the backyard and they were just blown away by the sides. It seemed like every afternoon would catch up. It was like a party for them where it was just a regular day for me.”

    2026-02-05 · Capital Allocators · Brendan O'Connor – Alpha Opportunities in Australia at Regal Partners (EP.485) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “As my first job. I initially wanted to be an engineer when I was at school, but very much driven by a desire to get a job and get a pay packet in my hand. I thought a career in accounting and finance was a surer way to get a job straight out of university. So I started off at KPMG in order. I really enjoyed my time because it was like a big business school. I found that it helped round out a lot of the theoretical aspects you learn at university. As an auditor, you go into a range of different businesses. You ultimately get to learn how they work, from oil and gas businesses to manufacturers to banks to asset managers. We've got a deep understanding of how each business worked. I guess the other part of why I enjoyed my time there, I met my wife. We've now been married for 28 years. And we have six children of our own. So it was a very important phase in my life.”

    2026-02-05 · Capital Allocators · Brendan O'Connor – Alpha Opportunities in Australia at Regal Partners (EP.485) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “I was born in regional Australia, a little town called Lithgow, the other side of the Blue Mountains, the youngest of seven children. Mum stayed home to raise the kids while Dad went to work. Dad worked for a government agency that helped families and children that came from broken homes, domestic violence, sort of truancy. We moved around New South Wales, a state on the east coast of Australia, and we ended up in Grafton. I spent my formative childhood up there having an idyllic childhood. We didn't have much money. But that didn't matter when you were riding around on your bike exploring the quiet streets, exploring the local river, the local beaches. I had a lot of fun. By the time I turned 10, my elder siblings were going to university down in Sydney. We relocated down to Sydney and we ended up in the western suburbs of Sydney at a place called Tungabi. That was a big culture shock, but it was there when I finished high school and worked part-time jobs through university. I started off at KMG.”

    2026-02-05 · Capital Allocators · Brendan O'Connor – Alpha Opportunities in Australia at Regal Partners (EP.485) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “There are three key things that have shaped the pension system in Australia. There is a multi-decade trend to internalise asset management capability rather than using third-party providers. There's an acceleration of a pre-existing trend around passive and ETF fund investing. Obviously, that's been a good trade for them, but it misses out on some of the positive aspects of active management. It also means there's been a slower adoption to alternative investment strategies, which is really regal sweet spot. Regal's edge in providing investors, not just in Australia, but around the world, access to the best of Australia's alternative investment strategies inherently or necessarily means that we need to be originating those opportunities.”

    2026-02-05 · Capital Allocators · Brendan O'Connor – Alpha Opportunities in Australia at Regal Partners (EP.485) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “There's market structure that means that we're being able to generate alpha from a section in the market that an offshore investor perhaps just is less familiar with. Part of the answer to that is being able to explain some unique structural elements to the Australian market. Australia is an interesting miracle in this regard. Some of those micro and macroeconomic reforms that the government introduced in the late 1980s translated into the introduction of a superannuation guarantee levy in 1992 it first started where 3% of everyone's salary was put aside as pension savings that rate is now 12% of everyone's salaries.”

    2026-02-05 · Capital Allocators · Brendan O'Connor – Alpha Opportunities in Australia at Regal Partners (EP.485) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “Australia uniquely provides a very idiosyncratic return series that is diversifying to what you'd find elsewhere. If you have a look at the Australian marketplace, financials and materials, think of resource companies, represent about 55% of the market. That's very different to many other equi markets around the world. The nature of the Australian economy, we're probably the 15th largest economy in the world. We sit just below South Korea from an economy size. We've got half the population of South Korea as an example, so a GDP per capita is double theirs.”

    2026-02-05 · Capital Allocators · Brendan O'Connor – Alpha Opportunities in Australia at Regal Partners (EP.485) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source