Manulife AM names finance, marketing chiefs

Canada’s Manulife Asset Management has continued the overhaul of its business in Asia with the appointment of regional marketing and finance heads for the region.

Grace Ho joins as Asia chief marketing officer for wealth and asset management (WAM) from Schroder Investment Management, where she served in a similar post.

Frederich Reidenbach has been named as Asia chief financial officer for WAM, having previously held the joint role of CFO and chief operating officer at Japan’s Nikko Asset Management.

Both are newly created positions for the joint WAM business, following the merging of asset and wealth management in the region under the leadership of Michael Dommermuth.

Ho started on October 13, following the September 29 departure of Ginie Lam, the former Asia head of marketing and communications for Manulife AM.

Dan Paterson continues as Asia head of finance for Manulife AM, but now reports into Reidenbach, who started in his new role on August 20.

Gianni Fiacco remains Asia COO for wealth and asset management, a position he took up in March, having been with the Manulife Financial group since 2005. 

The hires of Ho and Reidenbach follow a raft of senior personnel changes, notably the departure of HK funds head Steve Chiu and the arrival of Bruno Lee from Fidelity as Asia head of partnership, product and platform development for WAM. Shirley Lam has also been promoted internally as Asia head of wealth.

On the insurance side, Manulife is still seeking a head of distribution partnerships for Asia, following the promotion of Jonathan Hekster to regional head of the bancassurance partnership with DBS, as reported.

The firm declined to say whether there are any other positions it is looking to fill.

At Schroders, Ho was Asia-Pacific head of marketing in Hong Kong. Prior to that, she held various marketing management positions with other financial institutions in the region. Schroders is seeking a replacement for Ho.

A 32-year industry veteran, Reidenbach acts as a strategic adviser to the general managers of Manulife’s combined WAM business.

He spent 10 years with Nikko AM as Japan CFO and COO, and was a key figure in the integration in recent years of Nikko acquisitions DBS AM, Treasury Asia AM and Tyndall Investments. Before this, he held senior roles at Fidelity in Japan and worked at Smith Barney and Coopers & Lybrand.

Reidenbach left Nikko AM on March 31, and his responsibilities were taken up by head of finance Takashi Shimizu and head of operations Edgar Gehringer.