Deloitte Buys Consultant Casey Quirk | Chief Investment Officer

Deloitte has acquired independent asset-management consultant Casey Quirk, the firms announced Monday.

Casey Quirk’s clients have included a majority of the world’s 50 largest asset managers. It will rebrand as Casey Quirk by Deloitte.

“The combination brings together capabilities to help our clients drive transformational change across their organizations,” said Joe Guastella, US financial services consulting leader at Deloitte.

The acquisition will allow the firms to better address “evolving and complex challenges including globalization, innovation, competition, and, most importantly, shifts in investor requirements,” Guastella continued.

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The merger is the latest to take place in the investing consultant space. Towers Watson merged with Willis Group early this year to form Willis Towers Watson, while Russell Investments—which has a large consulting arm—was purchased by TA Associates in October.

On Casey Quirk’s part, Managing Partner Yariv Itah said the acquisition would enable the firm to maintain its “tremendous” growth. Casey Quirk had more than doubled its staff in the last three years, as well opened offices in New York and Hong Kong.

“We also believe this creates a superior career platform for our talented team,” Itah said.

Co-founder Kevin Quirk, who took over as chairman last year, added that the sale would “broaden our global financial services footprint and deliver differentiated execution capabilities for our clients.”

100 Stefan Dunatov Stefan DunatovInvestment think tank the 300 Club has appointed Coal Pension Trustees’ CIO Stefan Dunatov as its chair.

Dunatov is the first asset-owner CIO to lead the group, which brings together investors, managers, academics, and consultants from the UK, Europe, and the US to debate issues central to pension and savings policies.

He takes over from Lars Dijkstra, CIO at Dutch asset manager Kempen.

The outspoken Dunatov—a three-time member of CIO’s Power 100 list of influential asset owners—is one of seven current pension investment chiefs among the 300 Club’s 19 members. The 300 Club was founded in 2011 by Saker Nusseibeh, chief executive at Hermes Investment Management.

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“Investment committees should spend 80% of their time on investment strategy and 20% of their time on choosing the right manager, and too often it’s the other way round,” Dunatov told CIO in a 2013 interview. “The industry is also too focused on the wrong benchmarks. It’s not obvious to me why market benchmarks matter anymore. [We need to be] dragging people away from thinking about their performance against what they might have got. There are a lot of regret-driven decisions made in this industry.”

See Stefan Dunatov present his case for insourcing of investment strategy in this video from the 2014 Summit of Dangerous Ideas.

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