MFS sheds staff ahead of merger

By Michael Bailey

SPECIALIST mortgage and property fund manager MFS Limited has retrenched its entire five-person marketing team and four others from its Gold Coast head office.

The marketing team, headed by former Telstra marketing boss Brett Lyndon, was asked to leave immediately. Two secretaries and two juniors, some of whom were in the mortgage team, have also left.

Staff were told the retrenchments were part of a “restructure” in the lead-up to a merger with Gold Coast-based holiday accommodation group, Breakfree, an ex-employee said.

However, MFS general manager of distribution Sean Preece said the Breakfree merger had nothing to do with the retrenchments.

“Quite the opposite — it’s a product of MFS itself only being listed in January,” he said, referring to its merger with a publicly floated investment trust the group already owned.

“It’s an opportune time to review your business and become more mean and lean.”

Preece said an example was luring Steve Kyling from Challenger to run MFS’ flagship Premium Income mortgage fund.

“Steve’s position includes extra levels of responsibility that frees up some people beneath him, and some restructuring has been around that.”

On the marketing side, Preece said each MFS division would become more responsible for its own promotion, rather than using a centralised marketing team. An outsourced marketing provider would complement this, he said.

MFS founder and executive chairman Phil Adams was unavailable for comment as MoneyManagement went to press.

MFS, which is also one of the owners of HFA Asset Management, announced its intention to merge with Breakfree late last month, with the listed companies combining into one with a market capitalisation of $385 million.

Breakfree has an internal marketing team headed by Mark Jensen, and outsources marketing communications to Gold Coast-based Crook Publicity.