Manulife Investment Management Names Aviva’s Colin Purdie as Public Markets CIO

Manulife Investment Management has named Colin Purdie as its CIO for public markets, effective December 1. He will succeed Christopher Conkey, who will switch roles in anticipation of his retirement at the end of 2024 after more than 40 years in asset management, including 13 years with the firm.

Purdie will join Manulife Investment Management from Aviva Investors, where he is CIO of liquid markets and leads teams among credit, equities, multi-asset and macro, ESG and trading. He also served as CIO of credit; as global head of investment-grade credit; and as an institutional credit portfolio manager. Before Aviva, Purdie was an investment manager at Aegon Asset Management. Prior to that, he was a fixed-income broker at Charles Stanley.

“After 13 wonderful years with Aviva Investors I have decided that now is the time for a new challenge,” Purdie wrote in a LinkedIn post. “I am very much looking forward to getting to know the global public markets team at Manulife Investment Management and building on the success that my predecessor, Chris Conkey, has driven over the past number of years.”

In his new role, Purdie will lead the investment team and oversee all aspects of the public markets investment process, including the investment performance of its equity, fixed-income and solutions-oriented strategies. He will also be in charge of developing and implementing the company’s investment philosophy, risk management approach and environmental, social and governance integration. Purdie will be based in London, reporting to Manulife Investment Management President and CEO Paul Lorentz.

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“We’re excited to have Colin join us and are deeply appreciative of Chris’ outstanding contributions to our business,” Lorentz said in a release. “With Chris’ leadership and guidance, we established a foundation of pursuing consistent returns through both market growth and volatility and expanded our solutions through organic team builds and acquisitions, while also integrating ESG factors into our listed equity and fixed-income portfolios.”

According to the firm, Conkey will become a special adviser to the CEO when Purdie officially joins, focusing on the leadership transition and then shifting to special projects within public markets and the broader organization.

“I’m proud of what we’ve delivered to clients over the past 13 years, and I’m confident that Colin will continue to build on the foundation that’s been established for our teams and our investors,” Conkey said in the release.

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Tags: Aviva Investors, chief investment officers, Christopher Conkey, CIO, Colin Purdie, Manulife Investment Management

The U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware imposed a default judgement of $145.7 million on an investment company and depository for selling silver coins fraudulently, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission announced on Monday.

Argent Asset Group LLC, First State Depository Co. LLC and Robert Leroy Higgins, the owner of both, sold American Silver Eagle coins to investors, according to the CFTC. Higgins and the companies then leased those same coins from the investors and paid investors monthly payments. They told the investors the coins were fully insured and under the custody of First State Depository.

However, the coins were not custodied or insured. Additionally, Higgins misappropriated “tens of millions of dollars” worth of coins from more than 200 customers, according to the CFTC’s release.

The scheme began in January 2014 and was known as the “Maximus Program.” Investors had the option of transferring their own coins to the defendants in exchange for monthly payments or buying them from Higgins.

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The CFTC complaint from September 2022 explained that, “To the extent that defendants even obtained ASEs for customers in the first place, defendant’s typical practice was for FSD to systematically transfer all of the customer’s ASEs to Argent and Higgins, and for Higgins to sell those ASEs to third parties. This was typically done by moving metal from FSD’s vault to Argent’s offices at FSD, but on occasion it was simply accomplished by having metal delivered directly to Argent without ever being physically placed in FSD’s vault.”

The complaint says that no assets of equal value were used to replace customers’ ASEs, and “very little, if any, of the leased silver was actually stored in customer accounts at FSD.” It goes on to say that the “Defendants misappropriated the Leased Silver, simply taking it and diverting it for their own use.”

The CFTC brought charges in October 2022. The CFTC claimed it served the defendants and that they never responded. The judge therefore issued a default judgement of $112.7 million in restitution to their victims, as well as $33 million in civil penalties.

The District Court established a receivership for First State Depository. A website made by the court-appointed receiver states that $78 million in precious metals is unaccounted for in FSD’s vaults and that Higgins was arrested on June 10.

No information on how to contact the defendants was readily available.

Tags: CFTC, commodities fraud, silver, silver coins