Ana-Marie Lockyer has shifted from chair to chief of Pie Funds as founder of the boutique funds management and KiwiSaver firm, Mike Taylor, steps back into full-time investment mode.
Lockyer joined the Pie board in 2019 soon after taking up the position as inaugural head of AA Money, the-then new partnership between AA and Suncorp.
Prior to AA Money she spent about a decade in various senior wealth management roles at ANZ and the bank’s joint venture with ING.
In a statement, Taylor said after almost 15 years helming the firm he founded in 2007 “the timing is right for me and for the company to hand over the operational leadership of the business”.
For most of that 15-year period he was also chief investment officer (CIO), except for a three-year stretch ending in March 2022 when Mark Devcich served in the role.
Devcich and former Pie portfolio management colleague, Chris Bainbridge, launched a new investment boutique, Discovery Funds, last month.
Taylor remains as Pie CIO and executive director following the leadership change, allowing him “to focus all my time on our clients’ investments, to deliver strong, consistent and sustainable out-performance, the foundation which I started the business 15 years ago”.
He would also lead the charge to grow the Pie investment team (of about a dozen now), which has been through several changes over the years with offices now in Sydney and London – in addition to its Auckland and Havelock North home bases – as the manager expanded to global stocks from its initial Australasian small caps focus.
Pie has about $2.3 billion under management including close to $500 million in its associated Juno KiwiSaver scheme.
Lockyer was head of wealth products in her final role at ANZ with responsibilities including the operations of the bank’s three KiwiSaver schemes, which collectively represented about a quarter of the entire market.
“Having worked closely with Ana-Marie in her role as chair of the board at Pie Funds over the last two years I am excited to have such a high-calibre individual who has excelled at all levels during her career in financial services picking up the reins of CEO,” Taylor said. “She will be a great fit for the team, our investors, and our shareholders.”
Graham Ansell, former ANZ Investments CIO, is also an adviser to the Pie investment committee.
Meanwhile, Hastings-based licensed mortgage investment firm, Midlands Funds Management, has named Rhys Trusler as chief executive.
Trusler replaces Anton Douglas, who lead the approximately $110 million mortgage fund specialist from October 2020 until July this year.
Before joining Midlands in September, Trusler served more than three years as managing partner at property lending firm, Southern Cross Partners, with broad responsibilities across operations, risk, compliance, finance and other areas.
He previously held senior finance company roles in a 10-year period split about evenly between GE Capital and Wells Fargo, based in Auckland.
Midlands emerged out of the Hawke’s Bay lawyer-sourced second mortgage industry with similar firms once dotted across NZ regions. Along with Norfolk Mortgage Management and the Auckland-based First Mortgage Managers, Midlands is one of the few in the sector to transition to the licensed managed investment scheme regime in 2016.