Since the emergence of “Modern Portfolio Theory” and the “Capital Asset Pricing Model” in the late 1960s, institutional investors have taken a quantitatively driven approach to portfolio construction, looking to create portfolio diversification and obtain better risk-adjusted returns by balancing their asset-class exposures. This journey has seen several important advancements in thinking about how to optimally achieve desired results.
Funds that want to take the total portfolio approach first need to get the total portfolio view. To do that they not only need data – and lots of it – but a rock-solid understanding of exactly how they’re going to use it.
Movers and shakers, appointments and disappointments
Super funds and asset consultants provided most of the spark in the people moves over 2013 – the appointments and disappointments – as funds continued to hire but their managers were reluctant to in the face of a sluggish marketplace.
An analysis by ‘Industry Moves’, a new service to be launched in the new year by data management and research firm Data Rules, has collated people movements in funds management and institutional investment from most specialist industry publications and websites, as well as the main newspapers.
In her analysis, Debbie Wilkes, a co-founder of Industry Moves, lists 60 major movements of the year. They tend to be dominated by the moves at fiduciaries.
Big-name CEOs to resign or retire, for instance, included Tony Lally from Sunsuper, Mark Burgess from the Future Fund, Martin Crowe from Telstra Super, Terry McCredden at UniSuper and Debra Jackson from TWU Super.
Among the senior investment staff at funds, there was Mark Sainsbury, the former CIO of First State Super, and Paul Coenraads, former head of investments at Auscoal, among the disappointments, and Richard Brandweiner, at First State Super, Peter Laity, at State Super, and Ben Samild, at the Future Fund, among the appointments.
The asset consulting world saw a lot of change. At Russell Investments, CEO Chris Corneil was made redundant in a restructure which saw Alan Schoenheimer take over from a regional perspective, only to be replaced a few months later with the return of global CIO, Pete Gunning, from Seattle to become CEO in Australia.
At Mercer, the global CIO Russell Clarke was announced as a welcome return to Melbourne, and Andrew Howard moved to Treasury Group as the first CIO of the multi-affiliate firm.
At Towers Watson, Hugh Dougherty, the head of manager research, was made redundant and Ross Barry, an alternatives specialist, went part-time and then moved completely to First State Super.
At JANA, Ken Marshman, who had been with the firm for about 25 years – almost since inception – retired.
Among managers, big moves included Rob Goodlad being made redundant as CEO of SSgA for Australia, Michael Clarke joining Challenger from Russell, Gerard Doherty departing Fidelity and then replaced internally by Michael Bargholz, who had been there for just a few months as investment director, and John Wilson, who launched PIMCO in Australia in the late 1990s, departing to do a range of activities and enjoy life.
Debbie Wilkes and Data Rules partner Katrina Mathieson say Industry Moves is an online database containing appointments and departures at executive and board level relating to the insto and retail finance industry and their service providers. It will be launched in February.
“Historical content goes back to July 2012 and relates to those moves that have been reported in press releases and/or trade publications. All articles are linked back to the original online source and new ‘moves’ are updated daily. It’s a free service for registered users.”
