Perpetual shuffles Aussie equities team amid departure

Perpetual has named a new research lead as its deputy head of equities exits the fund manager later this year.

Deputy head of equities Anthony Aboud tendered his resignation after spending more than 14 years at the ASX-listed group.

He is also the portfolio manager of the Perpetual Industrial Share Fund, Perpetual SHARE-PLUS Long-Short Fund and Perpetual Pure Equity Alpha Fund.

Aboud joined Perpetual in 2012, hailing from Ellerston Capital, where he worked as a portfolio manager for six years. Before that, he was the lead analyst at UBS Investment analysing gaming stocks and small caps.

In the funds that Aboud managed, Sean Roger will move from co-portfolio manager to portfolio manager of the Pure Equity Alpha and the Share Plus fund.

Nathan Hughes will take over as portfolio manager of the Industrial Share Fund.

Meanwhile, Louise Sandberg has been appointed into a newly created role as head of research, as well as co-portfolio manager of the ESG Australia Share Fund.

Sandberg joined Perpetual nearly four years ago as a senior equities analyst, covering large and small-cap companies across the property, discretionary consumer and consumer staples sectors.

She joined from Bank of America Merrill Lynch, where she was a research analyst for almost four years and spent roughly the same amount of time at Goldman Sachs and Fidelity.

"Anthony will continue to work closely with the team over the coming months to ensure an orderly transition of portfolio responsibilities," a Perpetual spokesperson said.

"Perpetual's Australian equities team is one of the largest and most experienced in the market, and we have a strong team to carry investment oversight going forward.

"Perpetual has a proven history of orderly succession and promoting talent from within, which ensures continuity in the management of our strategies and ongoing delivery for clients."

Perpetual last week rejected an unsolicited takeover bid from Swedish private equity giant EQT which valued the firm at $2.5 billion.

"The indicative proposal was highly conditional and did not adequately represent fair value for Perpetual shareholders in the context of a change of control transaction and the board determined that it was not in the best interests of Perpetual shareholders," Perpetual's board said.