McFadyen departs in shake-up at Invesco

In the third major shake up to hit the sales and marketing division withinInvesco Australiaover the last year, the group’s head of sales, Tony McFadyen, has been made redundant after less than six months in the job.

Invesco Australia chief executive Michael Parsons announced yesterday McFadyen would be replaced by the current chief executive of Invesco’s Singapore office, Peter Hodgson, who will take on the newly created role of head of sales and marketing in Australia.

McFadyen, formerly the head of institutional sales at Invesco, only took on the head of sales role after the group decided to merge its retail and institutional sales teams last September, forcing the former head of retail sales, John Ntatsopoulos, out of the business.

Ntatsopoulos’ departure was followed by that of Invesco’s head of marketing, John Mann, who, along with marketing colleagues Lydia Paczynski and James Godfrey, was made redundant late last year when the group put a number of strategic marketing activities on hold.

At the time, the redundancies in the marketing team, which has reported directly through to Parsons since Mann’s departure, were seen as a sign of continuing difficulties in Invesco’s integration of County Investment Management, which it acquired from theNational Australia Bankin 2000.

Hodgson, a Canadian who has been involved with two previous acquisitions within Invesco’s parent group Amvescap, will, as well as assuming the responsibilities over retail and wholesale sales previously held by McFadyen, take on the marketing responsibilities held by Mann prior to his departure.

McFadyen today expressed some dismay at being forced out of Invesco before the results of group’s sales effort over the last few months could be fully assessed.

“I am disappointed, in that it was a surprise, and because what we were doing was creating a sales culture that was beginning to come to fruition and by later this year I think it would have paid dividends,” McFadyen says.

The decision to relocate Hodgson to Australia, a much bigger operation for Invesco than Singapore, was made in a meeting between Parsons and the chief executive of Invesco’s Asia Pacific operations, Anthony Lowe, in Hong Kong last month. But the appointment was only confirmed after Hodgson himself flew into Australia to cast an eye over the local operations.

Hodgson, who is an associate partner of Amvescap, is also a member of the group’s global sales and global offshore product committees, and, as well as reporting to Parsons, will continue to report directly to Amvescap in those capacities.