Colonial First State Global Asset Management (CFS GAM) has ramped up its campaign to attract wholesale investors, with Australia/NZ managing director Joanna Davison creating a role running institutional marketing and communications, and filling it with a former Vanguard executive.

Colin Bold will start at CFS GAM on January 18, after spending 2009 helping Rice Warner Actuaries establish infrastructure for its marketing campaigns. Before that, Bold spent three years heading marketing for Vanguard Investments, before having to relocate to Sydney at the start of this year for personal reasons.

Bold will oversee CFS GAM’s marketing and ‘e-marketing’ teams (the latter looks after the group’s nine different websites) and be responsible for client reporting and responses to requests for proposals.

Davison said the appointment, which had ben advertised nationally, signalled CFS GAM’s “repositioning” and renewed focus on the institutional market.

Rice Warner principal Michael Rice, who first contracted Bold through endgame Communications and then employed him on a permanent basis from July, said he was sorry to lose the marketer but that the work of establishing a sales procedure had been done.

“It wa important work because actuaries are not natural salespeople, we tend to prefer to sit back and work with our existing clients,” Rice said.

Rice Warner will pause to consider how to replace Bold.  Rice said that Melbourne executive Amanda Roberts had recently expanded her role beyond marketing and more into sales responsibilities, and that a similar person may be sought in Sydney.