People Moves Roundup | Chief Investment Officer

AMP Capital Appoints Former Apple Operations Head as Senior Adviser

AMP Capital has appointed Thomas Preising as a senior adviser to its infrastructure equity business, as it embraces technological innovation and seeks to harness infotech to streamline and enhance the operations of its global infrastructure assets.

Preising was most recently the global business operations director for Apple. Before joining Apple, Preising had worked at Hewlett Packard for a decade. He began his career in infrastructure, working at US rail business Conrail and as an infrastructure project associate at McKinsey.

Based in Delhi, Preising joins AMP Capital’s team of 15 senior advisers. The advisers provide insights to AMP Capital’s investment and asset management teams, which work with the senior advisers to ensure the sustainability and long-term profitability of AMP Capital’s infrastructure investments.

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“India is a growth market for us in 2019, offering interesting opportunities for global infrastructure investors in sectors such as telecommunications and infrastructure health, and Tom’s local market insights and business acumen make him a fantastic addition to our India team,” said Boe Pahari, global head of infrastructure equity.

Temasek International Announces New CEO

Dilhan Pillay Sandrasegara will succeed Lee Theng Kiat as chief executive officer of Temasek International, effective April 1. Lee will take over from HO Ching as chairman on the same date.

Pillay will be responsible for the role of Temasek as an active investor and shareholder. He will also oversee the operations of the firm, and the organization of its talent and resources to deliver sustainable long-term returns.

Lee will oversee the development of Temasek as a forward-looking institution, and will work closely with Pillay on commercial strategies and portfolio matters.

“Dilhan has the ability to connect the dots, a keen eye for details and practical solutions, and a boldness to break new ground in anticipation of longer-term trends,” Lee said.

As of March 31, 2018, two thirds of the underlying exposure of the Temasek portfolio was in Asia, including Singapore (27%) and China (26%). Outside Asia, 22% of the underlying portfolio exposure was to emerging technological trends and opportunities in US and Europe, up from 17% in 2015.

Sunil W. Savkar Joins Debevoise’s Finance Group

Debevoise & Plimpton LLP announced that Sunil W. Savkar has joined the firm’s corporate department as partner and member of the firm’s Finance Group and Private Equity Group.

Savkar’s practice will focus on complex acquisition and leveraged financings. He will be resident in the firm’s New York office.

“Sunil’s nearly 20 years of broad-gauged finance experience aligns perfectly with our leveraged finance practice,” said Michael W. Blair, the firm’s presiding partner. “Sunil brings a valuable perspective on complex finance issues that will make him particularly attractive to our clients, and further enhance our finance team.”

Savkar received his J.D. from Columbia University School of Law, where he was a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar, Kent Scholar, and articles editor of the Columbia Journal of Transactional Law.

Schroders Adds Head of Institutional Consultant Relations and Taft-Hartley Institutional Sales Director

Schroders announced changes to its distribution team, promoting Marni Harp to head of institutional consultant relations for the US and bringing aboard Scott Garrett as an institutional sales director, focused on Taft-Hartley.

Harp will be responsible for overseeing the firm’s relationships with local and global investment consultants and their institutional clients. She joined Schroders in August 2016. Harp is based in Los Angeles and will report directly to Marc Brookman, deputy CEO of North America.

Garrett has joined the firm as an institutional sales director responsible for new business development and relationship management for Taft-Hartley clients in the US. He joins from Systematic Financial Management, where he was a senior vice president. Garrett will be based in southern California and will report to Rock Wilkinson, head of US institutional sales.

These changes build on last month’s announcement of expanding the firm’s US distribution team to advance its North American growth strategy.

Brad Kronland Promoted at Oak Street Funding

Brad Kronland has been promoted to director of insurance lending at Oak Street Funding. Kronland has worked in the banking and financial services industries since 1995, and has been with Oak Street since 2014, focusing exclusively on the insurance sector.

Kronland will lead the insurance lending sales teams. He is tasked with optimizing the team’s lending expertise in creating customized commercial loan products for Oak Street’s insurance vertical.

“Brad’s client and employee-focused mindset makes him ideal for this leadership position,” stated Rick Dennen, president, CEO, and founder of Oak Street Funding.

Kronland holds a B.S. in finance from Butler University as well as an MBA from Northwestern University’s J.J. Kellogg Graduate School of Management.

Tags: AMP Capital, Debeviose, Oak Street Funding, People Moves, Schroders, Tamasek International

For the past three years, the Fed has jacked interest rates skyward. That’s a bad idea, and the central bank should actually be lowering them, say some Wall Street savants.

When the Federal Reserve announced Wednesday that it likely wasn’t going to raise interest rates further this year, the critics argued that the Fed’s staying on hold wasn’t enough—and that it should reduce rates, by at least a quarter-point.

Advocates of doing a 180 on the Fed’s tightening policy fear that the US economy is on shaky footing, and that higher rates are the equivalent of the 18^th century practice of bleeding a sick person—that the cure indeed will kill the patient.

“The last hike was a mistake,” said Bob Browne, CIO of Northern Trust, referring to December’s 0.25 point increase, the most recent in a series of nine that began in late 2015. “Why don’t we reverse the mistake?”

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At the outset of the Fed’s tightening campaign, the expectation was that a strengthening economy would produce upward price pressure. That didn’t happen. Inflation remains stubbornly below the 2% annual level that the Fed deems healthy for the economy. (It nosed above that level last year, then retreated). The Consumer Price Index was up 1.5% as of February, compared to the 12 months prior.

Meanwhile, unsettling signs of a weakening economy have cropped up. Job growth, retail sales, and business investment stats are disappointing lately. The Fed’s median projection for 2019 economic growth has slipped to 2.1% from 2.5% in September.

In the view of Narayana Kocherlakota, an economics professor at the University of Rochester and former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, “the Fed should be considering more stimulus for a US economy that has long failed to meet its goals for employment and inflation.”

“With a potential slowdown coming in both US inflation and global growth, that means thinking about lowering interest rates,” Kocherlakota wrote in Bloomberg Opinion.

To former banker Frances Coppola, writing in Forbes, “The Fed has not given an adequate explanation for the pace of interest rate rises last year, which appeared unjustified in terms either of the Fed’s mandate or key economic indicators.”

“The Fed should be proactive and not reactive,” Northern Trust’s Browne said. The road ahead looks sufficiently bumpy that he believes the central bank should act now, instead of waiting until things get rough.

Investor expectations on rates have swung quickly from hawkish to dovish. According to the CME Group’s fed funds futures, investors believe short-term rates will stay unchanged this year, by 62%, with 30.1% expecting a one quarter-point easing, and 6.2% looking for two reductions. That’s a big change from just last December, when 75% thought there would be at least one hike, 22% foresaw rates not to change, and 3% saw rates lowered once.

Jerome Powell’s Lousy Market Record for Fed Day Ends

The Betting on the Fed This Week

Tags: Federal Reserve, interest rate raises, Jerome Powell