PineBridge appoints former UK trade minister

PineBridge Investments has appointed former UK Minister for trade, investment and small business Mervyn Davies as non-executive chairman, a new role at the firm.

Davies will advise PineBridge’s senior management team, including chief executive officer Win Neuger, and the rest of the executive committee. He will continue to be based in London.

Davies was formerly chairman and group chief executive of international bank Standard Chartered, where he was a member of the board for over 12 years. During his tenure at Standard Chartered from 1992 and 2008, he was involved in the restructuring of the bank, including refocusing the institution on its emerging market roots in Asia, the Middle East and Africa.

Prior to assuming the chief executive position at Standard Chartered in 2001, Davies was the firm’s chief information officer and head of operations. His other roles have included chairman of the Business Council for Britain, chairman of the Hong Kong Association of Banks and member of the Exchange Funds Advisory Committee of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority.

Davies is also currently a vice chairman and full-time partner at Corsair Capital, a position he began in August.

Mervyn Davies

PineBridge manages assets for institutional and individual clients in private equity, listed equity, fixed income, and hedge funds. The firm’s sale by American International Group (AIG) to Hong Kong’s Pacific Century Group (PCG) was finalised in late March.

In the process of restructuring, PineBridge took the opportunity to streamline the organisation of the investment team, Neuger said in January. Whereas AIG Investments was fairly “hierarchical” and “structured”, PineBridge has a much flatter organisation. All the investment teams report directly and solely to the executive committee, eliminating the middle levels, he said. Each team will be “self-governed” and “self-propelled”. The intended result is to create a business that is more entrepreneurial and can make quicker decisions, Neuger said.
 
Hong Kong billionaire Richard Li, who controls Pacific Century Group, agreed to pay $500 million last year for parts of AIG Investments – everything except the real estate operations, the private bank and certain fixed income assets. Pacific Century took over the parts of the management company that AIG previously owned, though AIG remains a substantial (33 percent) client.

PineBridge has more than $78 billion in assets under management as of 30 June 2010.