Van Eyk Research (VER) has hired a former Wall Street researcher and has also snared talent from Queensland Investment Corporation (QIC) and Westpac to expand its research team to a record size.
The research house hired John O’Brien as its head of research to replace Nigel Douglas, who left for Perpetual Private Wealth to take up the job of senior manager of investment research earlier in the year.
O’Brien spent most of his career as an analyst within Standard & Poor’s (S&P) New York office.
He was within the firm’s structured finance and credit division, specifically looking after collateralised debt obligations (CDO).
O’Brien is a graduate of Yale, Harvard and the Washington School of Law.
He moved to S&P’s Melbourne post in early 2007 and was most recently at ANZ as director of research and analysis, financial institutions group.
The firm has also hired ex-QIC quantitative strategist Stephen Garner as a senior investment analyst for VER’s strategic research unit.
Former Westpac fund credit analyst James Armstrong also joins VER’s investment research team as an analyst.
However, VER’s head of strategic research Nigel Wilkin-Smith will leave the firm and return to Melbourne to take up a position with the Future Fund, which managed $67.62 billion as at the end of March.
Van Eyk will have a record 13 staff in its research team when the appointments commence.
