Two former Lehman Brothers Australia (LBA) employees, Simon Dawkins and Cameron Rae, have set up shop with Laminar Advisory.
They will focus on providing brokerage services.
Laminar operates in three distinct areas: brokerage, advisory services and asset management.
Former Challenger portfolio manager Chris Black leads the asset management group, while former Aviva Investors senior manager of credit Robert Camilleri heads the advice business.
“We will be operating as three different businesses, independent of each other,” Camilleri said.
The businesses, however, will work together on certain transactions.
Camilleri said his advice business was hoping to tap into the local government sector, providing investment advice specialising in fixed income assets to the councils.
The firm will be securing the services of Dawkins and Rae to help in debt origination for local government councils, he said.
“These groups operate on the fringe of capital markets, however these councils still need advice, and akin to that the best advice backed up by true portfolio management experience,” he said.
Some local councils have taken a $1 billion hit on investments in structured products on the back of the deepening global market crisis. A number of councils are currently involved in litigation against companies, including Lehman Brothers, that sold them the products.
Camilleri said he acknowledged some local councils had been burnt by their investments in structured products such as collateralised debt obligations (CDOs).
“Although some local councils have been burnt by structured fixed income products like CDOs, many of these councils did not have a diversified portfolio. This meant that when CDOs fell, their portfolios took a big hit,” he said.
He said he welcomed new guidelines that ensured local councils’ compliance with investment standards that included the risk objective and capital preservation.
