Coolabah Capital Investments

Christopher Joye serves as Co-Founder and Chief Investment Officer, directing the firm's fixed-income and macro portfolios. Jonathan Tepper is Co-Founder and Chief Economist, providing the macroeconomic framework that underpins the firm's investment approach. Both have economics and finance backgrounds, with Joye previously a columnist at the Australian Financial Review.

The firm sources proprietary opportunities through its multi-family office network of wealthy Australian families, giving it access to private credit deals not broadly marketed. Its ASIC-regulated fund management license also allows it to participate in institutional fixed-income tenders and bond auctions. The combination of family-office relationships and institutional market access creates a sourcing advantage in the Australian credit market.

It operates as a hybrid — a multi-family office for a select group of Australian families that also runs a fully regulated fund management business. This means the firm manages both bespoke family capital and third-party investor funds through separately managed accounts and registered investment vehicles. The dual structure is relatively rare and allows the firm to balance family-office discretion with institutional scale.

Coolabah focuses primarily on liquid fixed-income markets and private credit, so it targets short to medium-term durations — ranging from overnight money markets to 10-year sovereign bonds. In its private credit arm, it originates direct loans to Australian mid-market companies, typically with 3-to-7-year maturities. The firm also runs macro overlay strategies that are opportunistic and tactical.

The firm has not publicly disclosed a formal exclusion list. However, given its core expertise in fixed income and macro, it avoids early-stage venture capital and unproven technology sectors. Its portfolio is concentrated in sovereign and corporate credit, with real estate serving as a modest diversifier. Commodities and direct equity investments do not appear in the firm's public strategy description.

Yes, the firm operates the Coolabah Foundation, an independent philanthropic entity that funds education and environmental programs. The foundation is structurally separated from the for-profit investment business, though the founders are involved in both. This separation mirrors common family-office governance: investment capital generates returns, while philanthropic activity is a separate mandate funded by distributions.

The firm co-invests selectively in private credit transactions with other institutional investors, particularly in Australian and New Zealand markets. Its co-investment approach is opportunistic rather than programmatic — it takes a direct lending role where it sees structural alignment. The firm has not publicly disclosed a specific co-investment fund or a standard partnership model.