New Forests Names Sam Rorabaugh as Global Investment Chief as Natural Capital Breaks Ground From Its Forestry Roots

New Forests has elevated Sam Rorabaugh to global head of investments as the Sydney-based manager takes the natural capital platform it built on timberland global.

Rorabaugh, who has led North American investments since 2020, will work across the firm's regional investment teams in North America, Australia and New Zealand, Africa and Asia, while keeping his North America post. He succeeds David Shelton, who will focus fully on New Forests' Australia and New Zealand business.

The executive shuffling follows a busy summer. In June, New Forests launched Global Landscape Opportunities, its inaugural global natural capital offering, spanning forestry, agriculture, related processing and infrastructure, carbon and biodiversity, with a reported $750 million target. Days later, it acquired 44,200 acres of Washington timberland, a cornerstone of natural capital, giving the firm a scaled entry into the Pacific Northwest. The seller was none other than J.P. Morgan's Campbell Global.

Double Duty

Rorabaugh led that deal, and his account of it doubles as a description of the strategy he now runs.

"I am honored to have helped lead this effort," he wrote. "It represents a wonderful example of New Forests' multi-tiered, buy and build nature-based investment strategy and is a terrific outcome for all relevant stakeholders as well as the land itself."

For New Forests, natural capital still starts with working land. Forests produce timber. Farms produce food. But those same assets can increasingly produce other sources of value, from carbon and biodiversity to conservation and renewable energy.

The firm's new Washington holding offers a useful example. New Forests plans to maintain an active timber harvest on the 44,200-acre property while exploring carbon projects, conservation easements and renewable energy. It is the kind of layered return strategy New Forests increasingly places under the natural capital banner.

That approach reaches beyond forestry. Across its investment platform, New Forests groups sustainable forestry, agriculture, infrastructure, carbon and biodiversity under natural capital, with the underlying land remaining the economic foundation.

New Forests CEO Mark Rogers sees those assets taking on a larger role in institutional portfolios: "Natural capital is increasingly recognised as a core component of resilient portfolios," he said, "offering the potential for long-term returns while supporting critical outcomes such as climate stability, biodiversity and sustainable land use."

Natural Capital Comes Into Its Own

New Forests has company in putting the asset class more squarely in front of allocators.

On Sept. 2, J.P. Morgan Asset Management renamed Campbell Global, the Portland, Ore., timberland manager it acquired in 2021, J.P. Morgan Natural Capital, just 10 weeks after selling the Washington property to New Forests.

For more than four decades, Campbell Global built its identity around institutional timberland. Replacing that name with natural capital puts the asset class itself on the marquee.

"This is more than a new name," said Angie Davis, chief executive of J.P. Morgan Natural Capital. "It reflects who we are today and the direction we believe the asset class is moving."

The underlying assets are familiar. Forests and farmland are still doing much of the heavy lifting. What is changing is how managers are organizing them for investors, pulling forestry, agriculture, carbon, biodiversity and related infrastructure into a natural capital allocation.

That is the bigger shift. Natural capital has moved beyond a theme layered onto timberland and farmland and into an allocation institutional investors can make in its own right.