Update: Aberdeen restructures credit team
Aberdeen Asset Management’s head of Asia credit Scott Bennett left the UK firm last week as part of a restructuring that included four other individuals, whom the firm has not identified. He will not be replaced.
His duties will be shared among the rest of the credit team, with certain credit analysts taking up dual research and portfolio-management roles.
Bennett does not yet have anything else lined up, but says he is interested in serving as a credit portfolio manager in the region.
One search executive says Bennett should not have trouble finding a new role. “He’s coming from a very good house and has a strong track record,” says the Singapore-based headhunter. “He will find somewhere, it’s just a question of which firm he goes to.”
Aberdeen is understood to have restructured its fixed-income teams globally in recent months with a view to stronger integration across the firm as well as closing certain funds. It recently shuttered a credit fund that Bennett had been running, but Aberdeen officials say there is no connection between the events - the fund represented just a tiny fraction of the firm's AUM and was closed because it lacked economies of scale.
Indeed, the firm has in other ways been expanding the Asia team.
In August, Thomas Drissner, a financials analyst based in London, will relocate to the Asia credit team in Singapore. This follows the arrival of Charles Macgregor and Chow Thu-Ha in the Lion City in March as Asia-Pacific head of credit research and senior credit analyst, respectively.
Macgregor was previously Asia head of credit research at Aviva Investors, while Chow has been with Aberdeen since 2006 and she transferred from property and industrials research in London.
Bennett had joined Aberdeen from Dutch bank ABN Amro, where he traded Asian fixed income. Before that he worked for Citi in Hong Kong as a director in the fixed income credit department. He has also worked for Schroders in Bangkok and New York.
"I had a positive experience at Aberdeen," Bennett says. "I enjoyed the job and will likely find a new opportunity as a credit PM."
Aberdeen declined to comment on the changes.