PIS headhunts Guardian boss

Guardian Financial Planning managing director Paul Forbes has been hired by Professional Investment Services (PIS), with a brief to drive the growth of its Australian operations.

Forbes told Money Management he had joined PIS earlier this month as a replacement for former managing director Grahame Evans, who left the group in May after five years to head up Tower Investments.

No formal job description had been released at the time of going to press last Friday, but Forbes said there were “two parts” to his role at PIS, one as the managing director of the Australian Loan Company, the other being to essentially drive growth in PIS’ Australian activities.

Forbes will be a member of the PIS executive in his new role, reporting directly to Greg Whimp, managing director of PIS’ Australian operations.

“My appointment is recognition that PIS needs more senior management resources to support the local network, the Australian operation, at a time of rapid international growth,” Forbes said.

“The group is now getting extraordinarily big, with a network in New Zealand, Singapore, and Hong Kong, a joint venture in Malaysia, and [the group] is also looking at a couple of very big opportunities in North America.”

Forbes’ resignation from Guardianfp came as a “complete surprise” according to Brett Himbury, chief operating officer, distribution and corporate, of parent company Asteron.

Himbury said Forbes departure would not, however, derail the group’s “very strong growth plans around diversifying our advice proposition”.

“We are actively looking for an extremely high calibre candidate that can not only lead a dealership, but also build some new ones.”

Meanwhile, Grahame Evans announced last week that Tower Australia had employed Advance Asset Management’s head of product Sue Mieog as part of an ongoing strategy to strengthen its investment management capability.

Evans said the appointment of Mieog as head of investment reflected Tower’s strategy to “improve relationships with the financial planning community on the investment side”.

Evans was himself appointed to Tower from PIS in June this year as part of the same strategy.

He said Mieog had been “appointed to our most senior level in our senior executive team to bring the experience of her involvement with Advance, ING and BT into the group”.

Mieog would be “working heavily on three different areas, including the investment strategy overall, the product strategy, and also in regard to our existing book”, according to Evans.