RBC’s asset management arm hires international CEO
Growth-hungry funds unit RBC Global Asset Management has hired Clive Brown in a new role as chief executive of its international business to drive expansion.
Brown has been handed the designation CEO and managing director. He will assume the role on October 1 based in London, but will oversee the firm’s business in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia Pacific.
However, he will not oversee UK fund house BlueBay Asset Management, which RBC GAM acquired in 2010. A spokeswoman for RBC confirmed that Alex Khein would continue to run BlueBay AM independently as CEO.
“[Brown] and RBC GAM will continue to collaborate with BlueBay to ensure the strengths of both organisations are leveraged globally,” she told AsianInvestor.
Most recently Brown was global chief operating officer and Asia chairman for JP Morgan based in Hong Kong. He worked in that role for just a year-and-a-half, before leaving the firm in August 2012.
He served as CEO of JP Morgan Asset Management’s Asian and European businesses for more than seven years to 2010, based in London. He also worked as its Asia CEO for two years to 2003.
In his new role he will report to John Montalbano, chief executive officer of RBC GAM. Talking about the firm’s growth plans for EMEA and Asia Pacific, Montalbano said in a statement: “[Brown] has an exceptional background and is ideally suited to provide focus and direction to our teams in London and Hong Kong in support of our business expansion plans in these regions.”
RBC GAM has been building out its investment management teams in both London and Hong Kong.
Last August it announced the appointment of Mayur Nallamala, senior portfolio manager and head of Asian equities based in Hong Kong. He also came from JP Morgan AM based in HK.
Nallamala took over responsibility for managing RBC GAM’s $1.5 billion in Asian equity assets and now leads a team of portfolio managers and analysts out of the city, which comprised 11 investment professionals and staff at last count.
In February this year, RBC GAM announced the hire of two equity analysts and an equities trader in Hong Kong. They report to Nallamala, who works in partnership with Adam Matthews, who leads RBC GAM’s business development activities in Asia Pacific. Matthews now reports to Brown.
Overall Brown has worked for JP Morgan, its asset management unit or companies it has absorbed from 1991 to 2012. Prior to that he was chief operating officer for Robert Fleming Investment Management, and COO as well as group financial controller for Jardine Flemming.
His career started in 1982 with PwC, where he qualified as a chartered accountant and spent eight years in London, the US and Hong Kong, latterly as a senior manager.
While in Hong Kong he was seconded for a year to work with what was at the time the newly established Securities and Futures Commission and the Hong Kong Takeover Panel.
RBC GAM, the asset management arm of the Royal Bank of Canada, had $305 billion in assets under management globally as at the end of April this year.
It has grown organically and by acquisition, having bought Voyageur Asset Management in 2001; Phillips, Hager and North Investment Management in 2008; and BlueBay in 2010.