Frontier has recruited strongly over the past twelve months adding considerable depth to our team, including a number of resources in areas like technology. Our recruitment has been aimed to replace a limited number of departures over the year, but primarily to increase our overall capacity and specifically to add to our expertise in more technical areas. At 1 July 2018, our headcount stood at 58. Today we number 73, with Paul Newfield set to join us later this month.
Specifically in the last month we have added a number of very impressive people to Frontier. A very brief biography on each person is provided below.
Paul Tulloch joined the Alternatives and Derivatives research team as a Senior Consultant on 12 June. Paul comes to us after an eight-year stint as a derivatives trader with Optiver, based in Sydney and more recently Amsterdam. His experience with exchange-traded options, warrants and futures will extend the work in this field already being undertaken by Michael Sommers and his team.
Iain McMahon comes to us from J.P. Morgan’s London Office where he has spent the last four years providing quantitative and qualitative portfolio analysis, and other risk management functions across a variety of asset classes. Prior to his stint in London, Iain joined J.P. Morgan’s Sydney Office back in 2012. Iain joined us on 17 June and will operate as a Consultant in our Debt and Currency team.
Also starting on 17 June was Daniel Leslie who joins us from Mercer. Daniel has spent the last decade there, including a four year stint in the New York Office. He has great experience in conducting investment manager searches, asset class portfolio construction and strategic asset allocation reviews and will give great insight to our client consulting focus. Daniel has been appointed as a Consultant.
Adrian Hoe started on 24 June and brings with him over twelve years’ of investment experience having started his career at IOOF before moving to Lonsec in 2011 where he was a Senior Investment Analyst. Adrian will join our Equities Research Team as a Consultant.
Also starting on 24 June was Donna Davis in the role of Associate. Donna has prior experience with one of our clients, in AustralianSuper, which will give her a valuable client perspective on our service delivery. Donna has also worked with both the Commonwealth and ANZ Banks and brings a strong quantitative finance background to Frontier.
Thushani de Silva joined Frontier on 1 July and comes to us as an Associate from Zenith where she worked as a manager research analyst, with a strong focus on equities. She also has three years of experience with Capital Alliance, again with an equities brief, and before that started out at PwC.
Ann Tran also started on 1 July as a Capital Markets Associate (Econometrics). Ann has an impressive academic background, with a PhD in Economics. Her thesis explored the interaction between fiscal and monetary policy to achieve price stability in emerging economies. She has also studied in the UK and Vietnam and will give our team additional firepower in econometric modelling and analysis.
Paul Newfield will join us from Willis Towers Watson on 29 July, where he has held the role of Senior Consultant for over eight years. Prior to that posting, Paul spent twelve years at Mercer including a stint in their New Zealand Office, where he led Mercer’s retirement business and Chaired the Board of their trustee company. He is a qualified Actuary.
The gender balance across Frontier now sits at 45% and just a little lower amongst investment staff at 40%. The average tenure with Frontier, of our most senior staff, sits at 9 years and 20 years of industry experience – both very impressive metrics and indicative of the quality of our very strong consulting team.
