Morningstar closes its Brisbane office

Morningstar Australiahas today announced that it will close its Brisbane office as part of its strategy to consolidate the business under one roof.

Bought by former Morningstar Australia managing director Graham Rich in the early 90s, the database operations office in Brisbane employed 10 staff, all of which have been invited to move with the operation to Sydney.

According to Morningstar’s data team manager, Renee Tannous, the decision will mean a more efficient and responsive service for clients.

“In order to achieve our goal of electronic data collection more effectively, we’ll be consolidating our programming and experienced database operations personnel to work together more closely in one location,” she says.

Morningstar had only two offices in Australia — one in Sydney and Brisbane.

Morningstar’s corporate affairs manager Christine Winter says the closure of the Brisbane office reflects the company’s reorganisation and its focus on positioning itself for the future.

“The more people we have under one roof, the easier it is for people to talk to each other,” she says.

Winter says it is too early to tell how many of the Brisbane staff will move to Sydney.

The move follows the announcement in early March that Morningstar was closing its Christchurch office in New Zealand so it could outsource some of the company’s process function rather than housing them in separate operations.