The Australian office of T.Rowe Price under Murray Brewer has scored something of a coup, attracting the head of institutional business from a much larger local operation to drive distribution of its Global Large Cap Equity Fund.

James Bloom is due to leave Challenger Financial Services in early January to join T.Rowe Price, which has recently been promoting the Large Cap Equity Fund – run from Baltimore by Canberra-born Scott Berg – following the ‘soft’ institutional closure of Robert Gensler’s flagship Global Equity Fund.

Bloom had been at Challenger’s Sydney office for barely a year, after joining the group’s London office in 2007 after ten years at global thematic shop Newton Investment Management, where he oversaw FUM growth from 0 to US$25 billion.