A merger has a date. Making the merged business work takes considerably longer. Court Haas’s career includes a job with that second task written into its title: Integration Director. In 2015, Federation Centres and Novion Property Group came together in the combination that formed Vicinity Centres. Haas worked on the integration. Eleven years later, he stepped into the interim chief executive role at Mercer Super, another organisation whose recent history had been shaped by a substantial merger.
The connection gives his appointment a useful starting point. Superannuation, shopping centres and a Melbourne school might seem an unlikely professional itinerary. Look at the responsibilities involved, though, and a thread appears: finance, organisational change and the practical business of keeping institutions operating while plans become commitments. The spreadsheet gets to travel rather more widely than its reputation suggests.
Haas lives and works in Melbourne, on Wurundjeri land. His route there runs through Miami, EY, Australian property companies and financial advisory work. The newest title is Interim Chief Executive Officer of Mercer Super, effective from 13 August 2026. The earlier assignments explain why the work behind that title deserves a closer look.
The work after the signatures
On 11 June 2015, Federation Centres and Novion implemented their merger. The legal transaction had a clear completion date. The resulting group had shopping centres, financing arrangements, employees and reporting obligations to bring together. A combined corporate name could fit on a letterhead immediately; a combined operation required a longer timetable.
The financial details offer a glimpse of that complexity. Existing Federation and Novion bank loans were refinanced in June, with new bank facilities of A$5.1 billion. The accounting also required care: Federation was the legal acquirer, while Novion was the accounting acquirer. Even the answer to “who bought whom?” depended on which professional question was being asked.
Haas served as Integration Director for the combination. In the wider property chapter of his career, his responsibilities also included General Manager of Finance at Federation Centres and Financial Controller at Centro Properties Group. Across Vicinity and its predecessors, he spent eight years in the business. These were successive positions within a changing corporate landscape, rather than a collection of unrelated company names.
Centres+Novion
Property Group
Vicinity’s 2016 annual report gives a sense of the work continuing after completion. The group reported progress on integration, completion of its merger refinancing program and operational cost synergies achieved more than 24 months ahead of program. Those were results of the group and its teams. They provide the operating context for Haas’s assignment without turning a company-wide outcome into a personal trophy.
Miami, Melbourne, then a different kind of brief
Haas studied at the University of Miami’s business school from 1998 to 2002, completing a Bachelor of Business Administration in Accounting and Finance. His early professional experience included seven years with EY, covering audit in Miami and consulting in Melbourne. The move between cities came with a move between types of financial work.
Audit and consulting sit at different points in an organisation’s financial life. One examines the record; the other can involve helping a business work through a problem or a proposed change. Haas’s subsequent positions took him further into company finance, then into advisory assignments. The career crosses the boundary between examining a business and taking responsibility inside it.
Before joining Mercer, he spent seven years providing financial consulting and CFO advisory services to listed and unlisted companies. His assignments included business combinations, integrations and finance transformations. Former CFO roles included Think HQ and 100 Burgers Group, adding different business settings to the property experience.
That sequence is more revealing than a neat ladder of increasingly grand titles. There are stretches inside organisations and stretches advising them. There is technical finance and there is integration work. For a reader trying to understand the later move into an interim chief executive position, the variety of assignments is the useful detail.
A balance sheet with a school gate
In December 2020, Haas became a director of Melbourne Montessori School, subsequently named Melbourne Montessori College. School governance adds a different scale to the story. A budget here connects to a community with classrooms, facilities and a long-term educational plan. Corporate finance has arrived somewhere that measures time in school years as well as financial years.
The school’s 2021 chair’s report acknowledged Haas alongside Business Manager Mario Marinelli for careful financial stewardship. It connected the school’s solid financial position and modest fee increases with keeping fees competitive and affordable relative to other schools in the region. The recognition was specific, shared and concerned with the institution’s everyday ability to operate.
By 2024, the college was marking its fiftieth anniversary and continuing its Towards 500 strategic plan. A master plan set out a sequence of projects for the campus, facilities and educational environment. The chair again acknowledged the finance work, this time naming Business Manager Farha Syed and Finance Director Court Haas.
“financial stewardship, diligence and hard work”
Neil Cook, Melbourne Montessori College chair, acknowledging Farha Syed and Court Haas in 2024
It is a revealing piece of the professional record because the contribution is attached to something tangible: an institution planning its future and maintaining the resources to support it. The school chapter gives the finance titles a local setting. It also supplies a useful counterweight to the enormous figures that accompany the newest job.
The fund was already changing shape
Mercer Super’s expansion preceded Haas’s interim appointment. On 1 April 2023, BT Super merged into the Mercer Super Trust. Accounts transferred to Mercer Super, and the completed merger announcement described approximately 850,000 members and A$63 billion in total assets under management. That asset figure used combined data as at 31 December 2022.
The distinction between announcement dates and measurement dates matters. A merger announcement describes an event; an asset figure describes a particular reporting snapshot. Keeping the two clear makes the scale legible without manufacturing a performance story from figures taken at different times.
The fund’s 2023 annual report described the operational reach of the transfer: more than 500,000 new members, 16,000 corporate employers and over 350 colleagues joining from BT. Behind a single merger headline were people, employer relationships and a much larger organisation to operate. The report also acknowledged challenges during the fund’s recent growth.
These events belong to the institution’s history. They establish the setting Haas entered, rather than achievements to assign retrospectively to him. The relevant connection is the kind of organisation involved: one enlarged through a combination, with the continuing demands that follow. His earlier integration experience gives that setting particular interest.
One million members, one handover
Marsh announced Haas’s appointment on 14 July 2026. He was then Mercer Pacific’s Chief Financial Officer, responsible for financial strategy and operations across the region. The change took him from that regional finance remit to interim leadership of Mercer Super.
He succeeded Claire Ross, whose departure followed almost 17 years in senior leadership roles across three continents. At the time of the announcement, recruitment for a new chief executive was underway under Mercer Super board chair Jim Minto. The word “interim” describes the appointment’s place in that process.
David Bryant, Marsh’s Pacific CEO and Mercer’s Pacific President, described investment in “personnel, technology, systems and processes” alongside the fund’s growth. Those four items are an unusually practical accompaniment to an executive appointment. They point to the work inside a fund as well as the size displayed outside it.
Haas also serves on the Marsh People and Investments Pacific Executive Committee. His current responsibilities sit within that broader regional business. The retirement fund itself brings the focus back to Australian members and the institution holding their savings.
A career between the milestones
The dates make a tidy outline: a Miami degree, a Melbourne career, a property merger, a school board appointment and an interim CEO role. The work between those milestones is the more distinctive story. Financial controller, integration director and CFO advisor are titles concerned with how an organisation functions, especially when its structure or obligations change.
There is no need to turn that record into a legend about a single transformative moment. Its interest is cumulative. Haas has worked inside listed businesses, advised companies and contributed to school governance. Mercer Super adds a new institution and a different scale of responsibility to that sequence.
The merger date belongs on the calendar. The appointments belong on the résumé. Between them sits the continuing work of making organisations operate. That is the part of Court Haas’s career that connects a shopping-centre group, a Melbourne school and a fund with more than a million members.