Deutsche shuffles senior execs

Deutsche Asset Management has restructured its executive team in an effort to shore up operations of its divisions throughout Asia.

Michael Monaghan will be stepping aside from his chief executive role in Australia to take a new position of regional chief operating officer for the Asia-Pacific region.

Stepping into the Australian chief executive role will be Brian Scullin who will also keep his current responsibility of chief executive officer for the Asia-Pacific group.

Monaghan will be traveling between Australia and other countries in the Asia-Pacific region for the rest of the year, but will settle in Tokyo from 2002 onwards. Scullin meanwhile will be based in Sydney.

"The changes aim to best position the Asia-Pacific operations of Deutsche Asset Management to maximise the knowledge bank, resources and investment opportunities from the global business," Monaghan says.

He says that the strategy outlined in the past year has involved the disposal of the Deutsche Life and Deutsche Financial planning arms while developing private banking and its corporate superannuation product, DirectChoice.

"In the third quarter of last year we took the decision to go to a fully global structure," Monaghan says. "There will be a sharing of resources within the Asia-Pacific region. For example, all the HR for the region will be run from Sydney.

"Another example of this is the DirectChoice product. Japan is going to move towards the 401k market in its retirement system. This means I can use my own experience and the expertise, such as education which is a very important feature of the DirectChoice product, and apply it to products we make available to the Japanese market."

Scullin says the move ties in with Deutsche's push to create a truly global organisation which he says needs to be reflected at the domestic level.

"The restructure along global lines strengthens our operations by improving access to international experts and experiences, as well as allowing us to focus on serving the needs of our clients as a priority," he says.

There will be more appointments and restructuring of the senior executives in coming weeks following the global realignment of the business into institutional, retail and alternative investment businesses.

Deutsche currently has $133 billion under management in the Asia-Pacific region, including $34 billion under management in Australia, which will increase by about $2.9 billion once the recently acquired property division of AXA is completed.