Home / Alternatives head quits AMP Capital NZ after 17 years

Nick Dobson
AMP Capital NZ executive Nick Dobson has resigned after about 17 years with the business. Grant Hassell, recently appointed AMP Capital NZ managing director, said Dobson’s imminent departure had been well signalled.
“Nick has been in charge of AMP’s alternative assets – including private equity – which we’ve been selling down since the GFC,” Hassell said. “That sell-down is now just about complete, and Nick and I agreed it would be the right time for him to leave the business.”
He said Dobson would leave AMP Capital in mid-September. Hassell said the firm’s long-serving head of marketing, Jen Murray, would also finish up in September after securing a new role in a different industry.
Dobson first joined the firm as legal counsel in 1998 from seminal NZ funds management business Southpac Investment Management, which AMP purchased from the-then National Bank in 1997.
He subsequently served in a number of roles at AMP, taking up board director positions in dozens of associated entities over the years. Currently, Dobson is listed as director of 16 AMP-related companies.
His exit comes after a long period of change at AMP Capital NZ that has seen the investment business transformed from managing multiple asset classes in-house to a mostly outsourced model. After closing down its in-house local equities unit last year (eventually awarding the $690 million mandate to Salt Funds Management), AMP Capital only manages NZ fixed income internally.
The group also offers retail and wholesale products with underlying assets managed by its Australian parent and via Wellington-based multi-management division headed by Peter Verhaart.
In June, AMP Capital also rebranded its institutional market offering as ‘implemented asset management’, broadening the potential underlying suite of assets.
According to the latest AMP group results published in August, AMP Capital NZ managed just over A$17.4 billion as at June 30 this year.
– David Chaplin, Investment News NZ