Foundation North chief, Peter Tynan, has resigned
According to a statement from the Foundation North board, Tynan will end his six-year tenure at charitable trust “at the end of August this year”.
“Trustees and staff respect his decision to move on and warmly thank him for his significant contributions,” the statement says. “Through the disruptive period of the last few years, his values-based leadership has been instrumental in advancing the organisation’s vision of enhanced lives and in fostering strong relationships with the communities we serve.”
The board will start recruiting for a new chief “over the coming months”.
Tynan replaced long-time head, Jennifer Gill, at the roughly $1.8 billion Auckland community trust in 2019 after a stint as chief of the Royal College of General Practitioners.
Prior to the GP role, he served as Kaipara District Council chief following a five-year turn leading the Southern Cross Health Society ending in 2017.
Gill served for almost 16 years atop the organisation previously known as the ASB Community Trust.
The largest charitable trust in NZ adopted the Foundation North brand in 2015 in a trend-setting move for the community trust sector. For example, both the TSB Community Trust and the Canterbury Community Trust have since rebranded as the Toi Foundation and Rātā Foundation, respectively.
Now advised by Australian firm, JANA, Foundation North reported a return of almost 14 per cent in the previous financial year.
Mapua Wealth is recruiting for a new consultant amid ongoing growth in the investment advisory and governance firm.
The job, based in either Taupō or Auckland, involves research and portfolio design across a “wide range of investment activities, from managed funds to direct and co-investments in private markets”.
Chris Douglas, Mapua principal, said “ideally” the successful candidate would have experience in corporate finance and private markets as well as a strong grounding in investments.
Currently, the group has 12 staff with six “client-facing” staff including four partner-level consultants.
Formed in 2023 in a merger between MyFiduciary and IWIinvestor, Mapua Wealth has more than $5 billion in funds under advice in managed portfolios.
According to a release at the time, the combined group boasted about 75 clients, spanning “financial advice firms, charities, foundations, Māori and iwi organisations, KiwiSaver and pension providers, fund managers, and industry bodies”, representing about $20 billion of assets.
The firm also picked up a one-year contract to advise on the yet-to-be-implemented Auckland Future Fund (AFF) portfolio. Last month, the AFF issued a “closed tender for a global investment manager” to look after the roughly $1.3 billion raised by the sale of the Auckland City Council’s stake in the Auckland Airport.
IWIinvestor was the investment advisory business controlled by Tupu Angitu, the commercial arm of the Lake Taupō Forest Trust.
Under the merger agreement, Tupu Angitu took a 25 per cent stake in MyFiduciary, which rebranded as Mapua last October.
Meanwhile, Apex Investment Administration (once known as MMC) is looking to fill the head of custody spot left vacant by Geoff Cheesewright, who joined Apex when the group acquired the Trustees Executors fund accounting and custody operations last year, resigned in January to take on the newly created chief operating officer role at Lifetime Retirement Income.
Donna Mason, Apex NZ chief, said the head of custody role “is a senior leadership role that sits on the executive team within the Apex Investment Administration NZ business”.
“This role will provide best of both worlds – local expertise and responsibility backed by a leading global team,” Mason said. “We’re looking for an exceptional leader who enjoys working in an exciting, dynamic and team-oriented environment where they get to take ownership and accountability for the custody operations, product and providing exceptional service delivery to clients.”
Custody experts are a rare species in the NZ market with only a handful of providers offering the essential back-office service.
Unlike in most other jurisdictions, custodians also don’t require a licence to operate in NZ, although the Financial Markets Authority (FMA) recently confirmed it was pursuing a “potential law change” in the sector.
The FMA is also on the hunt for a head of banking and deposit-taking as the regulator “embark[s] on a new approach to ensure consumers are being treated fairly through the Conduct of Financial Institutions regime (CoFI)”.
COFI comes into force this week, bringing almost 80 firms into a new licensing system.
According to the FMA, the head of banking role includes responsibility for teams based in Auckland and Wellington as well as “ensuring the CoFI regime and licensing is well executed and operating seamlessly”.
The FMA has about 370 staff.
Also last week, Mosaic Financial Services Infrastructure has added a new principal consultant with the hire of former Momentum Life chief risk officer, Crespo Gao.
Gao will bolster the insurance heft of the specialist consulting firm, which covers a broad financial services ambit in NZ, while also bringing other category knowledge such as privacy.
Prior to joining Momentum in 2021 he held senior compliance roles at JBWere, Mercer and Fisher Funds in stints ranging from under 12 months to three years.