Northern Trust has appointed a 15-year veteran with the firm to run its expanding Australian office in Melbourne.
Paul Cutts, who has relocated from the Netherlands, where he had been managing director for the past two years, said yesterday that the Melbourne office, which opened last year, was looking to grow through local recruitment wherever possible. He said the firm’s priorities were to establish the infrastructure for the office in Melbourne and then to grow the business “in a steady and sustainable way”. Some more positions would be opened up soon. Northern Trust has two of Australasia’s highest profile clients – the Future Fund and NZ Super Fund. However, Cutts said the firm did not concentrate on those types of funds (sovereign wealth funds and endowments) exclusively. “We want to make sure we can leverage our broader asset servicing capabilities across a range of clients,” he said. Northern Trust has a global operating platform for core custody processing which enables it to run across the time zones with processing centres in the US, Europe and Asia. It has also invested heavily in front-end technology enabling information processing and reporting from (and on) alternatives managers. Cutts, who has responsibility for Australia and New Zealand, reports to Singapore regional headquarters, headed by Gregg Behrens.
There is one investment area where Insignia’s $180 billion super arm has not lost money for the past 17 years, which is what it calls the insurance-related investments. The alternatives strategy is gaining popularity among asset owners due to its diversification benefit, but Insignia’s super and asset management investment chief Dan Farmer warns it is a space where investors can suffer if they “stumble in without doing the homework”.
Darcy SongJanuary 23, 2025
