Matthew McLennan runs $US80 billion of global equities, cash and gold at First Eagle Investment Management a privately owned fund manager based in New York

Matthew McLennan runs $US80 billion of global equities, cash and gold at First Eagle Investment Management a privately owned fund manager based in New York. George Soros started his career at First Eagle where he worked from 1963 to 1973 and McLennan is arguably Australia's largest funds management export. He believes the outlook for the Australian economy could be challenging with currency instability in some of Australia's largest neighbours, like Indonesia, Japan and India, combined with our own exchange rate volatility presenting a potentially difficult period ahead. He also believes that if the private sector is in balance-sheet repair mode at a time when the government goes into a period of fiscal restraint, this could give Australia a fairly soft underlying pulse. McLennan discusses why he has avoided Australian banks, his view on the housing market and his view on current approaches to monetary policy. (VIEW LINK)