The story first aired in the AFR’s Street Talk column, and it lands at an awkward moment for Perpetual Limited. Aboud, one of the firm’s best-known stockpickers, has resigned to set up his own fund.
Here is the twist worth sitting with. That fund will manage money for just one backer, the New York hedge fund Millennium.
So this is not a bloke hanging out a shingle for mum-and-dad investors. It is a top Australian value manager going to work, quietly, for one of the biggest pools of hedge fund capital on the planet.
Aboud’s new fund strategy answers to New York, not Sydney retail
Millennium is not a small shop. It runs around US$79 billion and is built by Izzy Englander around dozens of separate trading teams, or pods. Each pod gets a slice of capital and a tight risk budget. Perform, and you get more. Lose too much, and the money gets pulled fast.
Aboud will reportedly run one of those pods from Australia. His edge for Millennium is obvious. He knows the ASX cold, and he has spent years finding cheap local names the rest of the market has left for dead.
Look at his old day job. He was deputy head of equities at Perpetual and ran the Industrial Share Fund, the SHARE-PLUS Long-Short Fund and the Pure Equity Alpha Fund.
The long-short and alpha strategies matter here. They already use shorting and aim for returns that do not just track the index. That is the exact skill set a pod shop pays up for.
His background reads like a map of Australian money. He started at UBS in 1998 covering the gaming sector, later managed capital for the Packer family, then spent six years at Ellerston before joining Perpetual. Blue-chip pedigree, and now a global platform wants it.
Anthony Aboud, deputy head of equities for Perpetual. [Perpetual Limited]
Perpetual’s funds future strategy now leans on a thinner bench
This is where it stings for Perpetual. The company is halfway through a painful clean-up, and losing a marquee name in the middle of it is bad timing.
Run the numbers. Perpetual copped $7.8 billion in net outflows from asset management in the December quarter. By late April 2026 its assets under management had slid 3.6 per cent to about A$219.2 billion. And roughly 78 per cent of that money sits in equities, which is precisely the part of the business Aboud helped anchor.
Meanwhile the corporate side has been through the wringer. The KKR deal fell over, and Perpetual has since agreed to sell its wealth management arm to Bain Capital for about $500 million, leaving it focused on asset management and corporate trust.
The equities bench has also seen churn before. Long-serving head of equities Paul Skamvougeras stepped down, with Vince Pezzullo taking over the role. Two well-known hands leaving inside a few years is the kind of thing financial advisers notice, and remember at review time.
Perpetual’s asset base has drifted lower as outflows bite.
A value investor walking into a hedge fund famous for short leashes
Here is the part that made me stop and read twice.
Aboud’s whole pitch is patience. He talks about “time arbitrage”, the idea that he is happy to underperform for a while if he has bought something cheap, because he is not fussed about the next quarter.
He once pointed out that Cochlear had fallen to a cheaper multiple than both Telstra and CBA, and backed his read against the crowd.
Now match that against Millennium. The pod model is the opposite temperament. It lives and dies on tight monthly risk limits, and it is known for cutting managers quickly when a book goes offside.
So you have a slow, contrarian value investor stepping into a machine built for fast, controlled bets. Those two things do not obviously fit.
Either Aboud has negotiated more room than a typical pod, or he backs himself to make the patient style work inside a strict cage. Both are interesting. Neither is a sure thing.
The talent drain from Australian funds is quietly speeding up
Zoom out and Aboud is not really the story. He is a symptom.
The best local stockpickers keep drifting away from big listed managers. Some go to boutiques. Some, like Aboud, plug into a global platform that will pay for a single skill without making them run a whole business.
That trend is the thing retail investors should actually watch. When you buy an active Australian fund, you are mostly buying the people. If the people keep leaving, the fund is not the fund you thought you bought.
Perpetual will point to its 17-strong equities team and its long history, and fairly so. But performance in active management is lumpy, and the wide gap between the best and worst managers is real money. It is worth understanding who is actually running your capital.
None of this is a reason to panic-sell a Perpetual fund. It is a reason to check the label. The same discipline applies whether you are picking your own shares or handing the job to a manager, and it is worth knowing where local fund managers are putting money in 2026 before you follow anyone.
The bigger picture is a reshaping funds industry. First the Magellan and Barrenjoey tie-up blurred the line between fund manager and investment bank.
Now global hedge funds are picking off Australian talent one pod at a time. Perpetual is caught in the middle of both currents while trying to fix its balance sheet.
Watch three things from here. Who takes over Aboud’s funds. Whether flows steady after the Bain sale completes. And how many more senior names follow him out the door.
That last one is the real tell.
Also Read: EY Scandal Shows Australia’s New Rules on Bank Data
FAQs
Q: Why is Anthony Aboud leaving Perpetual?
A: To start his own fund managing money for the New York hedge fund Millennium.
Q: What funds did Aboud run at Perpetual?
A: The Industrial Share Fund, SHARE-PLUS Long-Short Fund and Pure Equity Alpha Fund.
Q: What is Millennium?
A: A large multi-manager hedge fund run by Izzy Englander, managing about US$79 billion.
Q: How does this affect Perpetual in 2026?
A: It loses a senior equities name mid-restructure, while flows and AUM are already soft.
Q: Should investors sell their Perpetual funds?
A: Not automatically. Check who now runs the fund and how it performs before acting.
Disclaimer: This article is general information only and is not financial advice. It does not consider your objectives, financial situation or needs. Investing carries risk, including loss of capital. Seek licensed professional advice before making any investment decision.
Source: https://www.afr.com/street-talk/perpetual-s-star-stockpicker-anthony-aboud-resigns-to-start-new-fund-20260701-p60brs
Luke Carlino is a seasoned Copywriter, Content Strategist, and Social Media Manager specialising in Mining, Finance, and Business journalism. With more than a decade of industry experience, he brings rigorous editorial standards and commercial acuity to every project.
