Noah Schiltknecht has joined forces with a former Russell Investments NZ colleague to bolster his nascent independent consulting business.
Schiltknecht said John Horrell would officially start as partner with Makao Investments in November after relocating from the UK.
“John will help Makao become more scalable and help it grow,” he said. “ He brings a breadth of knowledge and a talent for finding smart and efficient solutions to complicated investment challenges to the business.”
Most recently, Horrell was senior asset allocation strategist for Russell Investment in London, finishing up a four-year stint there last month.
Prior to the UK role he served over two years as an investment analyst for Russell in NZ, working alongside Schiltknecht.
Horrell said the duo shared the “same vision” of providing quality, affordable investment advice “with no strings attached”.
“It’s not just in New Zealand, the investment consulting industry globally can be characterised as expensive, stale and inflexible in its advice, and as being increasingly focused on up-sells and cross-sells,” he said in a statement.
“We want to change that, ensuring transparency on costs and independence in advice.”
Under the Makao ‘building blocks’ model, clients pay for selected services rather than committing to a bundled advice package.
“Our overarching objective is to make sure that investors in New Zealand and the Pacific Islands get quality advice and meet their investment goals,” Horrell said. “Avoiding unnecessary expenses should help.”
Schiltknecht launched Makao this August after ending his eight-year career at Russell NZ – latterly as head of institutional – in June. Russell hired former Singapore-based State Street executive, Matthew Arnold, as his replacement, also in August.
At the time Schiltknecht said Makao would offer a “full service, scalable advice offering across governance, asset allocation and manager selection”, targeting small-to-medium wholesale investors.
“Makao is also working on an in-house asset allocation model, to provide clients with access to capital markets modelling that puts enough emphasis on risk management and scenario testing.”
He said Makao was still in “business development mode” but with “quite a few opportunities” in the pipeline.
According to Schiltknecht, Horrell helped develop the Makao concept prior to its August launch.
“Given all his thoughtful input into the strategy and brand of Makao I think it is appropriate to consider him a co-founder of the business,” he said.