Questions remain over loss of equities head

By RICHARD BRADDELL banking writer

AMP Henderson, New Zealand's largest fund manager, says it will provide an official explanation either today or tomorrow of a restructuring that has cost the job of Stephen Walker, the head of its strong-performing NZ equities team.

Mr Walker has headed NZ equities for the past six years, but has opted to take redundancy after his job disappeared.

AMP Henderson's managing director, Catherine Savage, said she had initiated the restructuring with the aim of putting the local investment operations on to the same structural footing as AMP Henderson's other global operations.

Until now, she has been both managing director and chief investment officer, but has relinquished the latter role believing that she should be concentrating on broader business responsibilities.

An "integrated" investment team is now headed by the new chief investment officer, Chris Wozniak, appointed several weeks ago.

Ms Savage said the restructuring was aimed at solidifying AMP Henderson's investment presence and had nothing to do with Mr Walker's performance or about downsizing and going to Australia.

But the restructuring prompted the investment funds research house FundSource to put a "hold" on AMP Henderson funds last week, effectively recommending that investors with AMP Henderson neither add to or reduce their positions until the changes are clarified.

FundSource executive chairman David van Schaardenburg said Mr Walker was known as experienced, competent and reasonably demanding.

There had been no real explanation of why such an important role had been disestablished. Mr Walker had responsibility for a $1.2 billion fund, with about $650 million of that actively managed. In the last quarter, the active fund returned 7.3 per cent and the passive 8.5 per cent.

Mr van Schaardenburg said the funds had been achieving above benchmark results without taking on a lot of risk.