The rationale for it is easy to understand – either the firm is taking care of house-keeping (not to be flippant about job cuts or redundancies) or the individuals concerned are fed up/looking for a new challenge/jumping before they are pushed, or all of the above.
Still, even by our industry’s standards, the stream of job changes unveiled in the past couple of weeks has been bumper notwithstanding the festive season surge.
One trend that has been difficult to ignore, however, is that much of the movement is in the sales and distribution side of the business.
This week alone we have seen departures from Invesco Perpetual, UBS Global Asset Management and Argonaut’s sales teams. Henderson Global Investors have also seen some high profile departures on that side of the company recently.
Portfolio Adviser has written before on the challenges to distribution models wrought by various regulation and legislation initiatives and the lengths companies may go to in order to tackle this problem.
Frozen money
But on top of that markets are difficult, with DFMs still moving money around but advisory sales frozen, according to a global head of marketing from one big UK-based asset manager.
Bonds are still dominating sales and there are only a few asset managers that are “mega bond players”, he added.
For equity-focused businesses it has not been a stellar year and a lot of business models are likely to be under pressure, with firm leaders having to adapt strategies accordingly and look at the whole sales team from top to bottom.
For some people such strategy shifts can work in their favour. Warren Tonkinson who left UBS Global Asset Management earlier this year has been charged with driving Old Mutual Wealth’s distribution now the various Skandia and Old Mutual brands have united under one central name.
This week it was announced his former colleague from UBS GAM John Shepherd will be joining him at Old Mutual, so there’s at least one person taking advantage of the changing distribution landscape.
Firms that are not in such a “sweet spot” are forced to examine strategy and staff count accordingly.
Impressions to be made
The behemoth that is Invesco Perpetual could never be described as a struggling firm and yet it has also seen three distribution departures recently. Head of marketing Rick White and sales manager Simon Dale have left as well as sales director Craig Newman.
Invesco said it will be making one sales and one marketing appointment in the new year but could not comment further on the changes.
As the year draws to a close it is natural for companies and their employees to want to take stock. For advisers and wealth managers the vast majority of these shifts could simply mean there will be some unfamiliar faces to deal with in the new year.
But there is another side to this story. Come 2013 there will be a whole host of keen and hungry salesmen looking to impress their new employers, and as I have argued before they will not necessarily look to advisers to bolster their figures.
