Lockheed Martin IM hires Asia head of private markets
Lockheed Martin Investment Management, which runs the defined-benefit pension assets for US aerospace company Lockheed Martin, has hired Joe Chang as head of private markets for Asia.
He was previously a principal at investment consultancy Mercer, responsible for due diligence on Asian private market funds.
He remains in Hong Kong for the new post and is understood to report to Chris Li, president of Lockheed Martin IM, and Jason Chang, a managing director who oversees the private markets team globally.
Joe Chang’s predecessor in the role, Denis Tse, left the company in April last year to set up his own investment firm, Asia-IO Advisors. The US team has looked after the duties of the role in the interim, said a source familiar with the firm.
Chang declined to comment.
Lockheed Martin IM has $70 billion in AUM globally, of which around half ($33.9 billion) is run for the defined-benefit (DB) part of the plan, with the remainder run for the defined-contribution segment.
Around 13% of the DB assets are invested in private market assets (private equity and real estate). The allocation range for private equity is 0% to 15%, while it is 0% to 10% for real estate. The company does not provide regional breakdowns.
Most of Lockheed Investment IM's DB assets are in funds run by external managers, but the firm also makes co-investments and is likely to do more of them, noted the unnamed source.
Chang had been with Mercer and its predecessor firm since 2009. He was head of the Hong Kong office at SCM Strategic Capital Management, a Swiss institutional investment advisor focused on private markets that was acquired by Mercer in late 2014.
Mercer has appointed his replacement, but said it could not identify the individual until they are on board next month.
Prior to joining SCM, Chang was an associate at EQT Partners, responsible for Greater China private equity and investment manager at Sumitomo Corporation in Hong Kong. He began his career in corporate finance as an analyst with UBS in New York and Citi in Hong Kong.