Macquarie restructures planning division

Macquariefinancial services has undergone a major re-structure with the division reverting back to a state-by-state approach from a national model, resulting in the departure of financial services associate director, Kevin Johnston.

Johnston, an 18-year veteran of the financial services industry, left Macquarie and his financial brain child last November after the group decided to restructure, leaving his position redundant.

Johnston was one of the key figures involved in the incarnation of Macquarie’s Financial Services division in 1999. During his two year contract, he established a co-ordinated national financial planning business with 80 staff and funds under management of around $3.2 billion. He was also responsible for establishing an in-house research team along with a compliance, training and technical area.

Peter Coleman, formerly with the National Australia Bank will now assume the role as joint head of Macquarie Financial Services and co-ordinate a much larger area than Johnston had managed.

Under the restructure, Coleman will oversee Macquarie’s private banking, private wealth management, and investment planning divisions. He will co-ordinate the financial planning division with executive director of the financial services group, Brett Spork. It is understood that plans Macquarie had made while Johnston was at the helm, including the nation-wide expansion of planners numbers are still high on the group’s agenda.

Johnston says he was made well aware of the pending changes by Macquarie and was offered alternative positions within the group. However, he declined the offers deciding instead to move on.

“The whole expansion has been leveraged off what I’ve put into place there, and I felt it was rather like giving up my child, in a way, and I didn’t really relish the thought of stepping back and seeing it doing alternative things that perhaps I wasn’t able to influence. So therefore I felt it was best to see what else was around,” he says.

Johnston says when Macquarie bought its state-based broking operations, each had different demographics to those of its Sydney based Macquarie operations. As such, it made sense to revert back to a state emphasis, as while the group was arranged on a national level, Johnston says some work still has to be done to ensure the group was incorporating the state-based requirements.