Renato Mota
News

IOOF appoints Russell Investments

By Renato Mota

In February this year, IOOF commenced a new relationship with Russell Investments. Steve Merlicek, Chief Investment Officer of IOOF, appointed the firm to assist with investment strategy, asset allocation and portfolio efficiency.

Steve is in the process of streamlining our underlying multi-manager divisions, United Funds Management and IOOF MultiMix. One factor that fuelled Steve’s decision to appoint Russell is the "important personnel changes" at Russell, which have included the hiring of Andrew Doman as global CEO, whose renewed focus on the traditional consulting business led in turn to appointments such as Greg Liddell, QIC's former head of implemented equities, who joined last year as head of investment consulting in Australia.

Steve also commented that Russell’s flexibility of an unbundled offering will give IOOF the option to appoint additional consultants for niche areas if required. Beyond investment consulting and manager research, Steve said IOOF would "look to take advantage of Russell's dynamic range of portfolio efficiency strategies such as emulation and Select Holdings. Russell's strategic tilting capabilities and its strong actuarial practice are also areas which may be useful for the group."

Acknowledging that Russell's multimanager funds made it a competitor to IOOF in one respect, Steve is confident that potential conflicts would be managed and said Russell's "more retail" pedigree actually suited IOOF's needs, particularly in its attention to medium-term asset allocation, its built-in transition management capability, and the range of educational materials and seminars it could make available to IOOF's staff and clientele.