The $18 billion Australian Reward Investment Alliance has hired a former Citi executive to ramp up its vigilance on risk.

The former regional head of equity derivatives strategy at Citi, Thomas Gillespie, has joined ARIA as a senior portfolio manager, focusing on risk analysis. ARIA chief executive, Lochiel Crafter, said that Gillespie’s position was a new role that would sit inside the fund’s now 10-person-strong investment function, reporting to chief investment officer, Alison Tarditi.

“We are just making sure that we have the appropriate resources,” Crafter said. “Thomas will drill down and look at the characteristics of risk across the portfolio. He will look at the contribution of risk from different asset classes, and alert us to any unintended risk that we may be taking.”

Crafter would not confirm whether Gillespie was among the 50,000
global Citi staff  made redundant
last year, or whether he left the group of his own volition. Another 27,000
Citi staff are expected go this year through further redundancies and natural
attrition.