Thomas Murray, the UK-based custody risk rating and advisory company which has gained instant fame in Australia through its work on the Future Fund backoffice tender, has hired a business manager for a new Melbourne office.

Karen Bignell began in the role mid-April, after fifteen years as a senior relationship manager with JPMorgan in London. Bignell, a UK citizen, migrated to Melbourne recently after her husband took a job there. “;JPMorgan doesn’t have a custody operation in Melbourne, so for me it was a matter of looking out for other opportunities,”; she said. She was then contacted by an ex-JPMorgan colleague who now works for Thomas Murray in London, informing her of the new role in Melbourne, for which she successfully applied. Bignell worked with Thomas Murray’s chief operating officer and lead Future Fund consultant, Ross Whitehill, in the early 1990s at Chase Manhattan Bank. Bignell said her main priority was to build on the interest generated by Thomas Murray’s involvement in the Future Fund custody tender. “;We offer a service that’s not available from anyone else in Australia – it’s not the full tender process, its providing the due diligence and risk management procedures around a decision, and then the ongoing evaluation of the operations,”; she said.