Dean Hegarty has parachuted into Queenstown as the first official paid person-on-the-ground for the Responsible Investment Association of Australasia (RIAA) in NZ.
The ex-pat Hegarty returns to NZ after a 12-year offshore jaunt that saw him serve in several commercial partnership roles in Australia, most recently as head of membership and engagement for the Australia HR Institute (AHRI).
Hegarty joined the Melbourne RIAA office in October 2020 as executive director membership and engagement, exercising his business partnering experience in a new environment.
“I wanted to do something that aligned my skill-set with my values,” he said.
Despite having limited knowledge of responsible investing – or investments in general – before taking on the role, Hegarty said he has been on a steep learning curve since joining RIAA.
However, his focus is more on establishing and maintaining relationships across the various membership groups including asset owners, fund managers and financial advisers, rather than the technical nuances of the RIAA product certification process.
“There’s been significant growth over the last couple of years in RIAA membership and the scale of engagement needed,” he said.
From his Queenstown base, Hegarty will be on the road a fair bit to liaise with the roughly 80 NZ RIAA members: the organisation has a total membership of about 500 across Australia and NZ.
He said NZ-domiciled funds represent about a quarter of those already certified as kosher ESG products by RIAA: however, half of the funds currently going through the organisation’s assessment process are domiciled in NZ.
Approximately half of the total 260 or so RIAA-stamped funds are available to NZ investors, Hegarty said.
RIAA is gearing up for its annual NZ conference set down for September 28 in NZ.
While Hegarty is the first NZ-focused RIAA full-time executive, the group’s member services manager, Josh Edmunds, was briefly based here in 2018. And RIAA, of course, has been represented in NZ since 2010 at the governance level by Matthew Mimms, founder of third-party fund marketing business The Investment Store.
Meanwhile, the under-fire Australian investment manager, Magellan, has resolved a lingering leadership uncertainty by naming former Future Fund deputy chief investment officer public markets, David George, in the twin roles of chief executive and managing director.
George replaces interim chief, Kirsten Morton, who stepped into the breach following the shock exit of Brett Cairns last December.
The manager has seen assets under management shrink from a high of about A$116 billion late last year to just over A$68 billion at the latest count – mostly due to the loss of large institutional mandates. However, outflows from Magellan appear to have stabilised with funds under management remaining more or less steady over April.
Magellan chief investment officer (CIO) and co-founder, Hamish Douglass, also took indefinite leave on health grounds this February, resigning his board seat the next month.
Chris Mackay, the other Magellan co-founder, returned to the business after a 12-year absence to assume Douglass’s CIO duties.
Morton shifts back to her former role as chief financial officer while also taking on the chief operating officer position at Magellan.
George, who held senior roles at Mercer before his 14-year stint at the Future Fund, joins Magellan on August 8 “or such earlier date agreed between the parties”, according to a release.
His appointment included oversight from a Magellan board sub-committee headed by John Eales, one of the many former Wallabies scattered throughout the Australian financial services industry.
Magellan will also pocket up to A$146 million from the sale last week of its 11.6 per cent stake in Mexican food franchise, Guzman Y Gomez, to a related party – the recently formed investment banking outfit, Barrenjoey Capital Partners. Magellan owns about 40 per cent of Barrenjoey, which launched in 2020.
The proceeds from the Guzman Y Gomez sale – expected to bring a profit of A$34 million – would be “used to support Magellan’s ongoing capital management initiatives”, the statement says.
In the wake of the latest news, the Magellan share price closed up at the end of last week at almost A$15.80 but still well below its 12-month high of over A$56.