The future remains unclear for Credit Suisse’s former Australian equity team post-Aberdeen acquisition after none of the team were offered positions with
Aberdeen’s newly expanded $20 billion business.
I&T News understands the team intends to stay together but has made no decisions regarding its future, although forming a boutique alone or in partnership with another fund manager are two of the options being considered.
In March, the head of Credit Suisse Asset Management Australia, Steve Giubin, did not rule out forming a boutique with his small cap and/or large cap Australian equity teams, which include Issam Eid and Steven Ng (small caps) and Giubin, Richard Kornman, Michael Jenneke and Heath Behncke (large caps).
He said then the team’s focus was on continuing to deliver outperformance for the CSAM funds until the day of their handover to Aberdeen, and indeed the funds benchmarked against both the ASX200 and the Small Ordinaries were second-quartile in the Mercer surveys for the three months to the end of March. Both in fact beat their Aberdeen competitors over that period – comprehensively in the case of the small cap fund.
Bill Bovingdon, chief executive officer of Aberdeen’s Australian business, said
Aberdeen’s “fairly uncompromising equity process” was behind the decision to not offer positions to CSAM’s equities team.
“Very much the preference is to build from internal expertise and to really grow our portfolio managers from graduates and to make sure they’re fully committed to the underlying philosophy of the equity process,” he said.
Almost 40 CSAM staff and around $13 billion under management have transferred to
Aberdeen as a result of its acquisition of CSAM’s traditional business.
Six fixed income professionals, including portfolio managers Victor Rodriguez, Stuart Dear and Justin Tyler have joined
Aberdeen’s fixed income team, bringing the total number to 13.
Alex Haynes has replaced Stuart James as head of retail distribution, while James has been appointed senior investment specialist, equities and will act as the local representative for Aberdeen’s offshore equity capabilities.
Louise Murphy and Dino Rebellato, both institutional business development managers at Credit Suisse, have joined the institutional sales team reporting to Stephen Dennis in his new role as head of institutional distribution.
On the fixed income side, Bovingdon said