Colonial First State chief executive, John Pearce, has resigned for a position at a Hong Kong organisation, and expects to be replaced internally.

“My view is when a company has been as successful as this it’s logical to look internally…There are some strong internal candidates,” Pearce said. Brian Bissaker, general manager product has been at the organisation since 2002 and is expected to be in the running for the position. Richard Nunn, general manager distribution, joined the organisation more recently in mid 2003. Pearce notified Grahame Peterson, Commonwealth Bank executive wealth, of his resignation two weeks ago and expects a replacement to be named before his departure on December 1. Pearce said he will remain in asset management in his new position in Hong Kong, but can not reveal his new employer until that company announces his appointment to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange later this month. “I’m pretty keen to get exposure to the Asian growth story…At the end of the day Colonial is mainly an Australian company,” he said. “If I was going to stay in Australia this would have been the perfect job.” Pearce has been at Commonwealth and Colonial for the past two decades and oversaw the launch of the low cost platform FirstChoice.