Australian wealth manager Shaw and Partners has appointed a national head of private wealth, who previously spent more than 20 years at Macquarie Group.
Chris Smith joined the firm last August as a state manager for NSW and has now been promoted to the national role. The division currently has 220 advisers across Australia and $40 billion in clients asset under management.
Prior to joining the firm, he worked for 23 years at Macquarie Group in a variety of roles, including NSW state manager for wealth management and as division director at Macquarie Private Bank.
While he was primarily based in Sydney, he also spent time working in Canada as managing director for Macquarie Private Wealth Canada. Shaw and Partners chief executive, Earl Evans, also spent 12 years at Macquarie as chief executive for banking and financial services in North America.
Smith will take over from George Deva who left the position after two years to join Sydney consultancy High Performance Consulting Group.
In a statement, the firm said: “Chris has demonstrated a deep understanding of our culture, people, and operational framework. Together with his insight, integrity, and hands-on leadership style, he is exceptionally well-positioned to lead the Shaw and Partners Private Wealth division, which manages over $40 billion on behalf of our clients.”
Smith said: “I see my role as continuing to build and grow this division, there’s some really important trends taking place in wealth management, not just in Australia but globally. These would be the intergenerational wealth transfer as well as the technological changes happening which both present a great opportunity and mean the adviser-client relationship will become even more important than it is now.”
Earlier this year, Shaw and Partners announced a $62 million deal to take a 75 per cent stake in investment firm Investment Services Group (ISG) which manages over NZ$7 billion in assets across wealth and funds management, as well as an investment platform.
ISG has 65 staff across its wealth and fund management divisions, and international wealth business JMI Wealth will rebrand to Shaw and Partners Financial Services, while its fund management arm Devon Funds will retain this title and continue to operate with NZ leadership.
Evans told Money Management: “Advice is undoubtedly a scale business, there’s no question about it. But there are limited opportunities on the M&A front because a lot of consolidation has already happened over the last decade.
“We’ve always taken an organic view and we have grown the Australian business from $6 billion to $38 billion in that way over the last 10 years. This deal was left field for us, but we are confident we can make it work, and we took our time getting to know the ISG business.”
Shaw and Partners is backed by global financial group EFG International, which took a 51 per cent stake in the firm in 2019.
