Bleakley leaves Bridges
Towerhas announcedBridges Financial Servicesmanaging director David Bleakley will step down and leave the group early in the new year after three years at the helm of the dealer group.
Tower Australia Wealth Management chief executive Andrew Barnes says Bleakley, who had been with the Tower Group for six years, took on the Bridges role with a three year time frame in mind. Barnes says as that time came to an end Bleakley had “an opportunity to look to the future and act accordingly and as such it is a friendly parting of the ways”.
Bleakley will be succeeded by his deputy Chris Wren who will take on the role of acting chief executive for Bridges, with Barnes yet to say who will take on the role permanently as he is still investigating the nature of the roles and the combined group after only starting with Tower at the beginning of last week.
“Part of that is to evaluate the activities we do and look at the structure, roles and responsibilities before we implement any plans,” Barnes says.
“Tower wanted more cohesion in the wealth management business and my charter is to build on David’s work but we regard Bridges as a critical brand and it will not be changed. Rather where we have capabilities in other parts of the group we will deploy them to support the Bridges business.”
Tower formed the wealth management division of the group through the recent restructure of it’s wealth management businesses, Bridges, Tower Credit Union Alliance,Tower Trustand Tower Asset Management with Barnes recruited from a similar role in Citicorp to head up the division.
As part of the moves the head of each of those groups will no longer report to Tower group managing director Keith Taylor but will report to Barnes who will report to Taylor.
Taylor also emphasised the friendly nature of Bleakley’s departure and says planners increased from 107 to 154 and funds under management increased from $2.7 billion to $3.5 billion under Bleakley.
AUTHOR
Jason Spits
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