(Pictured: Damian Moloney)

Frontier Advisors, Australia’s second-largest asset consultant, has added the UK and Europe to its research alliance base, complementing a deal with Segal Rogers Casey for North America last year. Alliances with research firms covering South America, Asia, the Middle East and Africa, are in the wings.

Frontier and Rogers Casey last year formed a research alliance known as the Global Investment Research Alliance (GIRA). The new member, announced last week, is LCP, an independent investment, actuarial and risk management consulting firm founded in London in 1947 (www.lcp.uk.com). The aim is for GIRA to eventually have several members, each of which is independently owned, to cover the total investment universe.

Damian Moloney, Frontier’s chief executive, said last week: “GIRA creates a synergy within the partnership in the way it adds to the existing strengths, insights and knowledge base of each member firm. Ultimately, that improves outcomes for clients’ investment portfolios. The addition of LCP strengthens what is developing into a formidable alliance.”

Australia’s largest asset consultant, by both number of institutional clients and aggregate assets under advice, is JANA Investment Advisers.

Both JANA, which is ultimately owned by NAB, and Frontier, which is owned by several industry super funds, are often questioned about the depth and breadth of their international research, compared with the major global firms of Towers Watson, Mercer, Cambridge and Russell. Nevertheless, they remain numbers one and two in Australia.

LCP has about 550 employees, including nearly 100 partners, mainly based in the UK, but also in Brussels, Utrecht (the Netherlands) and Abu Dahbi.