The appointments in the Investments Team include Ben Evans, former Director of Debt Advisory at JLL, who joins Metrics as Investment Directors based in Sydney. Mr Evans, who joined yesterday, will focus on commercial real estate transactions.

Mr Evans has over 16 years’ experience, with specialist property expertise spanning a decade. Prior to his role at JLL, Mr Evans has held a number of senior roles at Pepper Financial Services Group, BNW Group and National Australia Bank.

Metrics Managing Partner, Andrew Lockhart, said: “We are pleased to welcome Ben to the team, who brings a wealth of experience that will help us further strengthen our offering to investors and borrowers.

“The appointments are timely as we continue to see demand for funding from a range of corporates and commercial real estate borrowers as the economy reboots from the COVID-19 related downturn. The opportunity for non-bank lenders continues to grow in the Australian and New Zealand markets.”

Further appointments in the Investments Team include David Owen and Edra Tong, who’ve joined as Investment Analysts, and Harrison Murdoch and Anthony Helman, who’ve joined as Investment Associates.

Additional senior hires to support business growth trajectory

Other senior hires across the business include Stephen Nash, who joined on March 22 as Director Market Strategy and Felicity Cornforth, who joined on March 15 as Legal Counsel. Both are based in the Sydney office.

Mr Nash joins from Vision Super where he was in the role of Senior Market Strategist. With 20 years’ experience spanning the Asia Pacific region, he previously held Chief Investment Officer roles at Nambawan Super and PacWealth Capital, and Head of Fixed Income and Cash at State Street Global Investors.

Ms Cornforth brings over 15 years’ experience and joins from Pepper Group. She held previous senior roles at Minter Ellison and DLA Piper.

Mr Lockhart said Stephen and Felicity were a further two strong additions to the Metrics team.

“Stephen brings extensive asset allocation and macroeconomic expertise which will further bolster our ability to provide investment options in this exciting asset class. Felicity brings addition weight and depth of expertise to our growing legal team.

“The latest string of appointments reiterates the growth in the sector and increased demand from investors. With reliable income highly sought after, Australian corporate loans are proving to be one of the few asset classes that offer both capital preservation and attractive risk-adjusted returns,” Mr Lockhart concluded.

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Greg Thomas

Multi-boutique investment firm BennBridge has launched two boutique asset management partners in the UK – Tellworth Investments and Pembroke.

BennBridge was founded in November last year as part of Bennelong Funds Management. It provides operational and infrastructure support for local boutique funds management teams and distributes their funds across European and global markets.

Its first boutique partner, Tellworth, is an absolute return fund manager investing primarily in small and mid cap UK equities. The business is led by experienced investment managers Paul Marriage and John Warren, who formed Tellworth earlier this year after working together at Schroders.

As part of the partnership with Tellworth, BennBridge has been appointed as the investment manager of both the Schroders’ SARFCO UK Dynamic Absolute Return Fund and the Schroders’ SAS UK Dynamic Absolute Return Fund, managing £385 million (AUD$653 million) of assets at launch.

Tellworth has also expanded its existing team, with three new members of staff joining the business: Stephen Nash as head of trading; Seb Jory as head of data driven strategies; and James Gerlis as equity analyst, focusing on researching stock-specific investment opportunities.

BennBridge’s second partner, Pembroke, is an emerging markets (EM) equities manager founded by Sanjiv Bhatia, who most recently managed the EM portfolios within the Harvard Endowment from 2013 to 2017. It aims to generate alpha by identifying high conviction ideas derived from top-down themes and bottom-up fundamental analysis, with a low net exposure. Pembroke will be opening as a BennBridge boutique in the first quarter of 2018.

Greg Thomas, chief operating officer at BennBridge, said it is a testament to the strength of the BennBridge model that the business has launched its first boutiques with managers of such high calibre.

“Our strategic long-term partnerships are key to our business and we are confident that Paul, John and Sanjiv, and their teams, will continue building on their outstanding successes to date.

“Our business model is to provide a holistic range of services to our boutique partners, allowing them to focus on what they do best – managing clients’ assets.

“This model has proven a successful one in Australia, where Bennelong Funds Management has been operating for eleven years,” Mr Thomas said.

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