Regal Partners CIO Phil King to begin phased retirement

Phil King, co-founder and chief investment officer of Regal Partners, will begin a phased retirement after 20 years with the firm and will remain in his role until at least June 2027. The announcement pushed Regal shares down as much as 10% before they recovered to trade about 3.5% lower in afternoon Sydney trading.

King co-founded Regal in 2004 and runs the firm’s long-short equities business. He manages a significant portion of the firm’s investments, directly overseeing roughly 16% of Regal’s funds under management. The firm manages about AUD21.4 billion across listed equities, alternative investments, credit and real assets and reported approximately AUD1.4 billion of net client inflows across its strategies for the six months to the end of June.

Regal’s long-short equities unit comprises 35 investment professionals organized into 10 strategy teams, including portfolio managers, analysts and dealers. The wider group employs more than 200 people across six offices. King will continue in his role through mid-2027 to give the firm time to reassign his responsibilities across existing teams and to manage any investor and portfolio transitions.

The firm has faced investment and regulatory challenges in recent years. It wrote down a AUD200 million holding in biotech company Opthea to zero after a clinical trial failed, a decision King later acknowledged as a mistake. Regal has also faced scrutiny from South Korean authorities, who previously brought indictments related to alleged short-selling rule breaches that the firm denied. In Australia, Regal was cleared in 2021 in a separate matter involving a former dealer and portfolio manager who was banned by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission for market manipulation.

In a statement, King wrote he believed it was the right time to begin a staged transition into retirement. He added that the process will be phased to provide time for the firm to allocate his duties across teams.