Ron Liling, the founder and largest shareholder of Intech Investment Consulting, will take a step back from management, relinquishing his chief investment officer role, in a restructure aimed at lifting the firm’s capacity to produce more complex structured investment strategies and products
Michael Monaghan, the Intech managing director, said yesterday that there was more demand and opportunities for a large number of investments now than at any time in the past five or 10 years and Intech was reorganising in order to capture that. The research team, under Hugh Dougherty, and portfolio management team, under Liling, have been merged, with Dougherty taking on the new title of head of investments. Liling will concentrate on researching the two largest asset classes of equities and property. Monaghan said the changes would mean increased asset class specialisation among the researchers, who tended to be generalists under the previous structure. And, given the increasing complexity of products, a new unit called ‘relationship management’ will be created under Leonie Pratt, encompassing the former consultants’ team. Monaghan said that Intech needed to deal with its clients in a more proactive way, coming up with strategic ideas and a higher level of involvement, as well as getting ideas from clients. Pratt, a senior consultant, has been at Intech for six years. David McMahon, the head of the old consultants’ team, is convalescing after several months in hospital following a mountain bike accident. He is still unable to say when he will be returning to work. “The changes have created a lot of energy in the company,” Monaghan said. “A lot of people ask ‘what does Ron think?’. He loves it. He’s concentrating on the things he likes doing. He’s re-energised too.”
Hostplus chief investment officer Sam Sicilia has declared that for as long as he and chief executive David Elia are overseeing the $110 billion fund, there will be no investment internalisation. However, he acknowledges that if the institutional asset manager business model comes too much under pressure, it poses risks and instability to Hostplus’ externalisation model.
Darcy SongSeptember 10, 2024