David Gall, group executive of National Australia Bank’s (NAB’s) corporate and institutional bank (CIB), likes to look at the big picture. “We have built the business around big macroeconomic themes,” he says. One such big theme is a growing and ageing population, with pension needs to match. Australia’s pension funds, or superannuation funds as they are known locally, have become some of the biggest and most sophisticated in the world.
NAB, Mr Gall says, has built up a healthy profile, serving such funds, providing them with banking services alongside financing and advisory services to support their acquisitions. Such funds are typically looking for investment opportunities with a steady income stream, such as infrastructure and infrastructure-style assets. “We’ve built a business, internationally, in the UK, in the US and in parts of the EU, serving some of the world’s most active funds in terms of deploying their capital for investment,” says Mr Gall.
