Tower Trust reshuffles senior management

Tower Trust is restructuring its senior management ranks following its acquisition of IOOF’s trustee business and the merger of Tower’s Australian and New Zealand trustee operations

Tower Trust is restructuring its senior management ranks following its acquisition of IOOF’s trustee business and the merger of Tower’s Australian and New Zealand trustee operations.

The Adelaide-based subsidiary of Tower has restructured senior management along business lines rather than geographical lines, according to managing director Colin Baxter.

Former IOOF Trustees general manager Kenneth Taplin has left the company. Former general manager of the NZ operation, Glenn Clark, will continue to manage the Wellington office but will take on responsibility for the group’s corporate trustee operations in both Australia and New Zealand.

Tower Trust acquired IOOF Trustees in late July, increasing its assets under management to $6 billion. Just weeks before, the group announced it was to merge its Australian and New Zealand divisions. Tower is New Zealand's largest corporate trustee company with A$21 billion under supervision.

Baxter says there is bright prospects for the corporate trustee business in Australia, particularly among small to medium sized fund managers not wanting to go down the single responsible en-tity route. The purchase of IOOF Trustees will help expand the presence in Australia, particularly through the Sydney office. All six IOOF staff in Sydney have been retained.

Baxter says Tower Trust is also seeking to aggressively grow its administration service for self managed superannuation funds. To this end, Pat O’Brien takes over as general manager of per-sonal business on both sides of the Tasman.

Bob Armstrong takes over as general manager of operations with responsibility for technology and systems integration. Baxter says Armstrong will spearhead the push to integrate the three businesses administration and IT systems and to extend the administration function across the wider Tower group, whereby other Tower buisnesses outsource administration to Tower Trust. The integration of the three systems will mean rationalisation of the Adelaide operations of IOOF Trustees from about 35 employees to about 15.

In other appointments Peter Cocks takes over as general manager of marketing and distribution while Neal Smylie has been promoted to the position of chief financial officer.