Financial planning industry execs on the move

It has been a turbulent year in the financial planning industry, with a number of executives losing their positions as the consolidation in the market continues.

The biggest structural change to the industry in 2011 has been the merger of AMP and AXA Asia Pacific, which saw AXA chief executive Andrew Penn leave the company with a $17 million payout.

AMP chief executive Craig Dunn acknowledged in April that the merger would result in job losses where "duplication" existed, although he said the company would endeavour to limit any staff cuts to "natural attrition".

Count Financial agreed to a takeover by the Commonwealth Bank on 29 August, in a deal worth $373 million. The acquisition represented the big banks' first foray into financial services since the consumer watchdog blocked NAB's $13.3 billion offer for AXA Asia-Pacific.

More recently, the takeover of DKN Financial Group by IOOF Holdings Limited was made official in October. Five DKN board members resigned their positions as part of the agreement, and DKN chief executive Phil Butterworth left the merged entity on 21 October 2011.

Following an extraordinary general meeting last month, Matrix Financial Solutions shareholders voted to put 100 per cent of the company up for sale to an external investor. Matrix managing director Rick Di Cristoforo said the plan had "significant support" from both shareholders and advisers.

Snowball Group and Shadforth Financial Group joined forces in June, and will adopt the name SFG Australia (subject to shareholder approval). It has been announced that Snowball chief executive Tony McDonald will leave the company on 4 October 2012.

Zurich Financial Services sold ratings house Lonsec to Mark Carnegie-backed company Financial Research Holdings in June. One month later, Lonsec general manager of research Grant Kennaway departed the company to join Morningstar.

There was also movement at ratings house Standard & Poor's, with managing director of fund services Mark Hoven leaving on 29 July 2011.

Last month, former Professional Investment Holdings (PIH) chief executive Robbie Bennetts formally ended his relationship with the company he founded. PIH parent company Centrepoint Alliance chose not to continue Bennetts' two-days-per-week consultancy work.

Perpetual chief executive David Deverall completed the handover of his job to Chris Ryan on 4 March of this year.

In June, Mark Burgess resigned his position as managing director of Treasury Group to take on the general manager role at the Future Fund Management Agency.

Wilson HTM underwent a major reshuffle in March when chief executive David Groth resigned after a year in the role.

UBS Global Asset Management finalised its takeover of ING Investment Management Australia on 4 October, leading to the redundancies of 36 of the 120 ING staff, according to one source.

AMP Capital lost its head of Asian equities Karma Wilson in August, leaving Ragu Sivanesarajah and Jonathan Reoch as acting co-heads of Asian equities.

Finally, the big insurer Tower Australia was acquired by Japanese insurer Dai-Ichi Life in May. Tower later rebranded as TAL.