Mercer and ANZ Investments have walked away from a planned fund services agreement after more than 15 months of talks.
An ANZ spokesperson said in a statement: “We have decided not to proceed with an investment partnership with Mercer, having agreed with Mercer the partnership would not achieve its expected goals.”
It is understood Mercer was lined up to help ANZ with functions such as underlying manager selection in a potential arrangement first flagged in August 2023.
ANZ signed memorandums of understanding with both BlackRock and Mercer last year, citing interest in the latter’s “global expertise in investments and investment governance”.
However, this September the bank-owned manager formally hired BlackRock to “provide investment risk management and reporting services” as well as access to the global firm’s “risk and investment insights”.
“ANZ Investments remains committed to active investment and will continue to take the lead on investment decisions and select the assets we believe will perform strongly over the long term,” the spokesperson said.
“Having access to BlackRock’s global insights adds another layer of investment experience to inform the decisions made by our team here in New Zealand.”
The ANZ funds management team has seen significant change over the last few years with most of its veteran investment specialists dispersed across the industry and a fresh team installed.
In March this year, George Crosby joined ANZ as chief investment officer from the NZ Superannuation Fund (NZS) where he served almost 16 years in various senior roles. Crosby replaced Paul Huxford who resigned last year at the same time as the manager mooted the Mercer-BlackRock tie-ups.
Another long-time NZS investment specialist, Qing Ding, also came aboard ANZ in August 2024 as head of asset allocation – assuming the position previously held by Maaike van Tol who popped up at the now $81 billion sovereign wealth fund this March.
But the ANZ-NZS Venn diagram intersection also includes ANZ funds management head, Fiona Mackenzie, and head of investment partnerships, Paul Gregory, whose paths crossed when both worked at the government-owned investment house about 10 years ago.
Despite ending negotiations with Mercer, ANZ continues “to explore other potential partnerships, and deepening our relationships with existing external investment managers, to help us deliver good investment outcomes for our customers”, the spokesperson said.
The more than $30 billion funds shop, which manages about $21 billion of KiwiSaver money across three schemes, has made one external manager change this year – replacing MFS in an approximately $4.8 billion global equities mandate with a BlackRock multi-factor strategy.
In a shock move earlier this year, ANZ also exited the wholesale market, triggering about $3.5 billion of mandate activity including a roughly $750 million portfolio that ultimately wound up in BlackRock hands.