Hooper joins boutique manager

Former head of Advance Asset Management Russell Hooper has been named chairman of startup Australian investment company Castle Capital Management.

Former head of Advance Asset Management Russell Hooper has been named chairman of startup Australian investment company Castle Capital Management.

Fellow board members George Birch, Peter Lyon and Jop Werle will join Hooper in the new venture. Birch currently heads investment broking group Bendalong, while Lyon is a former executive with Pembroke and Hudson Securities.

Castle Capital Management will focus on both retail and wholesale investment ve-hicles in “markets not readily accessible to Australian investors,” according to Hooper.

The new group hopes to release details of the first of these vehicles shortly.

Hooper resigned from his position as managing director of the St George owned Advance Asset Management last September, an announcement which prompted a major restructure of the group. According to research house InvestorSource, funds under management at the group had dropped from $3.6 billion in late 1997 to $2.5 billion last September. The drop prompted InvestorSource to place a hold recom-mendation on the group, while another of the research groups, Assirt, downgraded its rating for Advance to ‘not rated’.