(pictured: Lynn Muirhead)
In a good sign for employment prospects in funds management, the global recruitment agency Odgers Berndtson has launched a dedicated Australian financial services practice.
The recruiters recruited Lynn Muirhead and Jules Orpin from CT Partners after that firm ceased to trade globally in June following a botched sale process. They had both previously worked for Johnson Partners in Sydney, which was taken over by CT Partners earlier last year. Recruitment is a bit like that.
Muirhead and Orpin, who have become partners at Odgers Berndtson, are being supported by research associate Melanie Hughes in the new practice.
Muirhead has worked for several recruitment firms in asset management and property, starting her career in Edinburgh with the Blomfield Group in the late 1990s.
Julie Steiner, the firm’s managing director in Australia, provided some interesting people-movement statistics last week. She said: “In the last two years, of the 26 Financial Services organisations (including REITs) listed on the ASX 100, eight have experienced a CEO succession event but interestingly, six of the eight were internal appointments.
“More pertinently, six of eight of these appointments brought international experience to the role as increasingly boards are looking to their senior executive talent to supplement local knowledge with genuine international experience. The Odgers Berndtson global platform is ideally placed to work with clients across the sector in managing succession and the broader senior talent agenda.”
Nevertheless, recruitment is a tough business and while the new practice is a positive sign for the financial services sector in general, employment growth overall has probably not yet recovered to pre-GFC levels, especially among the banks, bank-owned firms and other big financial services companies.