A former IOOF chief executive and managing director of Centrepoint Alliance has joined the board of COG Financial, which previously made a bid to acquire Diverger.
COG has appointed Tony Robinson as its new chair, replacing outgoing chair Patrick Tuttle who has sat on the board for six years.
Tuttle will step down from the board, as well as his fellow directors Steve White and Mark Crain, while Cameron McCullagh, who has been an executive director since 2015, will transition from an executive director to being a non-executive director. Peter Rollason will retain his executive director role, he is also a non-executive director at Centrepoint Alliance where COG has a 20 per cent stake.
Robinson joined IOOF in 2007 as chief executive and during this time, he facilitated the merger between IOOF and Australian Wealth Management. His role at IOOF was taken over by Chris Kelaher, the former head of the Australian Wealth Management, who held the role for a decade until 2019.
It was announced last month that Kelaher had returned to the financial advice industry and taken a consultancy role at advice licensee Sequoia Financial Group.
Robinson then went onto join advice licensee Centrepoint Alliance in 2009 as managing director where he worked until 2013.
Currently, he holds a chair role at asset manager Pacific Current Group among other roles.
However, COG flagged his experience in the insurance space as managing director of PSC Insurance, which was recently acquired by independent insurance broking platform Ardonagh Group. This saw PSC’s Australian and New Zealand operations merge with Envest, Ardonagh’s platform in the region.
Also joining the board is his colleague John Dwyer, director of broking at PSC.
Robinson said: “These changes to the COG board are an important step in COG’s evolution as it provides a new skill set and focus to enable the company to further exploit the opportunities in front of it.”
Tuttle said: “We believe the highly successful performance track record and proven business acumen that John Dwyer and Tony Robinson have jointly delivered over a long period in Australia’s insurance broking sector will be highly complementary and additive to COG’s core finance broking and aggregation business, thereby enabling the business to pursue further growth opportunities which will both enhance shareholder value and attract new investors to the COG share register.”
In October 2023, COG made a bid to acquire Diverger but was beaten by advice licensee Count, which completed the acquisition in March 2024 to create a $30 billion firm. The COG offer had proposed to acquire all of the Diverger shares on issue for $1.41 per share, with $0.68 in cash per Diverger share (48 per cent) and $0.73 in COG shares (52 per cent), but the firm withdrew the offer the following month.
“It has formed the view that Diverger’s major shareholders who could control the vote on the offer, in the absence of any public statements to the contrary, are unlikely to vote in favour of COG’s offer,” the statement explained.
COG subsequently took a 20 per cent stake in Centrepoint Alliance, a stake exited by ClearView Wealth as it pivoted the business to focus on life insurance.
“By acquiring the Centrepoint Alliance stake, COG is further applying its expertise in the identification, due diligence, integration and management of interests in financial services distribution businesses, in this case wealth management services,” COG said at the time.
