BT nabs ING small caps team

ING Australia’ssmall cap equity team has been poached byBT, marking yet another blow to ING’s track record in retaining senior staff.

Ben Griffiths and Brian Eley are the latest BT recruits, meaning that ING has lost six senior staff members from its Australian equities team within the past three years.

These departures include Greg Matthews, head of equities who moved to Macquarie, Greg Dearden, small companies portfolio manager who left for BNP, David Paradice also small companies portfolio manager who left to start his own group, Paradice Investment Management, and Peter Mouatt, head of equities, now with Macquarie.

While the latest departures are understood to be financially driven, with ING unable to compete with the BT offer, it does raise significant questions over ING’s ability to retain staff.

According to InvestorWeb Research’s senior investment analyst Piers Bolger, while money is potentially one factor driving the departures, the issue of why staff are attracted to leave for the dollars is more fundamental.

“Financial based remuneration is one part of it. But there has to be a culture to make people want to remain in the group,” Bolger says.

InvestorWeb Research say the ING small cap equity team had delivered solid investment performance since taking over the management of the small cap portfolios.

However, following the loss of the two senior investment personnel, InvestorWeb Research is now placing the ING Small Cap Sector under review.

“ING have recently finished a review of their investment processes in July. To have them leave five months later is definitely a loss to the group,” Bolger says.

He says the departures create an element of instability in the ING team and have the potential to effect staff moral.

In July, ING become one of InvestorWeb’s biggest shareholders, taking a 13 per cent stake in the research and technology outfit.