Aviva Investors Australia will be rebranded Antares, the firm’s parent company, MLC, announced today.
The rebrand places the business unit in line with MLC’s existing institutional fixed-income team of the same name.
Along with the name change, MLC has made a number of senior executive moves.
MLC Investment Management product general manager Sam Hallinan will now assume the role of Antares managing director.
Hallinan, who will retain his product general manager position within MLC, will report to MLC chief investment officer Nicky Richards.
As part of the change, Nick Pashias has secured a promotion to joint head of equities alongside Glenn Hart.
Aviva Investors’ former chief executive, Craig Bingham, departed the business following MLC’s purchase of Aviva Investors.
Commenting on the changes, Hallinan said: “The Aviva Investors team is highly regarded by the market, however, we acknowledge there has been some uncertainty around ownership and leadership over the past few years.
“We are very pleased to be in the position now where we can remove this uncertainty and connect the business more strongly into the market.”
The Antares equities team managed in excess of $4.5 billion of Australian equities across core, concentrated, income, long-short, small-cap and property strategies, the company said in a statement.
“Performance has been very strong with the vast majority of the funds in the first or second quartile over three years and the team has won a number of retail research house awards over the past two years,” Hallinan said.
The investment philosophy and process for Antares equities remained the same, he said.
MLC purchased Aviva Investors Australia in October 2011.
