Former Pie Funds chief operating officer (COO), Lance Jones, has resigned from the billion-dollar boutique’s board after a two-year stint as director.
Jones stepped down as Pie COO and chief financial officer this April, ending a four-year stint in dual roles. Paul Gregory, who took over from Jones as COO, also leaves Pie next month for the newly created director of investments gig at the Financial Markets Authority.
Pie has been through a major restructure this year that has seen about 10 staff depart the firm with through redundancies or resignations.
Aside from company chief and founder, Mike Taylor, the Pie board now include four directors: Roger Kerr; Ana-Marie Lockyer; Steven Nichols; and, Cecilia Robinson.
Meanwhile, the recently merged trans-Atlantic investment concern, Federated Hermes, is sharpening its focus on the Asia Pacific region, with the establishment of a subsidiary in Sydney, appointing Gary Horton as new head of distribution for Australia and New Zealand, and the recruitment of two new sales directors for its Singapore office. New strategies from US parent Federated Investors are expected to follow.
Federated Hermes reflects the integration of the operations of the former UK-based Hermes Investment Management, well known in Australasia, and its majority owner, the former Federated Investors, a New York listed manager which has also changed its name, and stock market ticker, to Federated Hermes Investors. Federated Investors paid Stg 262 million (A$480.7 million, under current exchange rates) in 2018 for 60 per cent of Hermes owned by the British Telecom Pension Scheme, which had started the business for its outsourced funds management purposes. The pension fund has retained 29.5 per cent and the former Hermes management 10.5 per cent. The pension fund has also remained the firm’s largest client.
While Federated Investors had little international presence, it also has a long and interesting history in the US, being spun out of the Aetna insurance company through a management buyout followed by IPO. The two things which particularly appealed to the US manager about Hermes, according to Harriet Steel, were the firm’s strong ESG capabilities, which permeate everything the manager does, and its international reach.
Steel, who joined Hermes in 2011, is the head of international business development (excluding the US). She said last week from London that the region would be seeing some new strategies from the combined entity. An example of one of Federated’s strengths is in money market funds and strategies, which could be offered in Europe and Asia.
Also last week, Morningstar, signaled the growing importance of data analysis in an organisational shake-up that brings its quantitative and qualitative research teams under the same roof.
Following the change, Lee Davidson will lead the merged quant-qual research team. Davidson was head of Morningstar quant research for the last five years.
On the qual side, Jeffrey Ptak, currently global head of manager research, will take up the newly created role of Morningstar chief ratings officer.
According to a Morningstar Australia and NZ spokesperson: “Aman Ramrakha, director of manager research ratings for Asia-Pacific, will report into Lee Davidson in Chicago. Other than that, no changes.” There are nine research analysts based in Sydney and another two in Mumbai reporting through the Australian office. Globally the integration between the teams would happen in the coming months, the spokesperson said.
Morningstar research chief, Haywood Kelly, said in a statement: “More tightly marrying our analysts’ in-depth, qualitative research with our quantitatively derived analytics will help us meet investors’ growing interest across asset classes and spur innovation.
“Furthermore, creating a chief ratings officer will ensure we maintain our high bar for ratings integrity and efficacy as we develop new methodologies and expand into new investment types.”