Tower Asset Management(TAM) chief investment officer Craig Turnbull has left the funds management group after it announced a restructure within the senior ranks.
The changes in senior staff result in Guy Hutchings taking on the role of investments general manager and managing director Paul Bevin also taking on the role of chief investment officer for Australia and New Zealand.
Hutchings will report to Bevin and be part of the senior management group of TAM and will cover the integration of client strategy with portfolio design and structure, manager selection and monitoring in the Australian market.
Before joining Tower he was with the BHP Pension Plan as a senior investment manager and joins as part of a push to create a team of “seasoned generalists” with senior portfolio management responsibilities.
Bevin says the seasoned generalist concept is consistent with Tower offering a range of diversified products which called for strong investment generalists to oversee the management of diversified portfolios and ensure they worked with client strategies.
Such roles would cover investment strategy and implementation, including supervision of asset management specialists, as well as liaison with consultants and clients.
The last two years have been a busy time for Tower after losing four of its seven equities team members to Alliance Capital at the start of last year and then announcing a company wide restructure to bring the Australian and New Zealand operations together under one management hierachy.
At that time, TAM was taken over by Paul Bevin, who was previously head of TAM in New Zealand. The head of the Australian funds management arm, Derek Goodyer quit the group and began a legal battle claiming unfair dismissal. The case was concluded in July this year for an undisclosed settlement.
However last Septmeber the group has also purchased Bridges for $168 million and has also announced the roll out of a new dealer group, Goldridge, to be headed by well known industry figure John Godfrey.
But this was not enough to stave off a recent downgrade byMorningstarwho, in September, dropped Tower to one star and gave the fund manager the status of “very poor quality.”
In the rerating, Morningstar says it found the fund manager had a combination of very low quality ratings and average and below quant ratings.
The research house was also unimpressed by the reblooding of the investment management team and says despite the group-wide restructure begun in May 2000, “significant marketing, distribution and repositioning is needed to achieve clarity in the strategic direction of the funds management business in Australia”.
However Morningstar did rate Tower’s Australian fixed interest, Australian equities, unit trusts and superannuation funds as having a neutral impact while Australian direct property was flagged as positive and wholesale unit trusts were also graded in the league of the positive.
