Tower back into investments with new multi-manager partner

Tower Australia Investments will announce a new multi-manager partner next month, after making the decision to outsource the process earlier this year.

Grahame Evans, chief executive officer of the $3.5 billion Tower Australia Investments, said all of the four majors – Russell, Intech, Mercer and AMP – had been shortlisted and a new suite of investment products would be on the market soon. “They are all extremely good companies”, he said. But the final decision was made not on cost or research capabilities, which were all similar, but the complementary nature of the business, Evans said. Redundancies are unlikely and the in-house investment team will continue to work with the new partner “We felt that it would be better to outsource than spend $30 or $40 million on doing it in-house,” he said. The new investment products will be more focused, according to Evans, rather than the ‘one-size fits all’ approach the group currently has, and are being designed in conjunction with the new multi-manager partner. “We don’t consider ourselves to be like the Macquarie Banks. Our offerings are for middle Australia. There’s a necessity to be quite simple,” Evans said. The new products represent a new push on the investments side for Tower, which has been risk-focused for most of the last 12 months. Tower’s risk product distribution network will also be utilised for distribution of the new investment products. In addition Tony Zulli has been appointed as head of distribution (investments) and will focus on delivery of the new products. “We’ve got to start moving back out in the market,” Evans said.