Tower Australia (Tower) has moved to shake up the internal reporting lines of its dealer group, Pivotal Financial Advisers, with a number of the firm’s executives shown the door.
Tower managing director Jim Minto confirmed Pivotal chief executive Mark Schroeder is no longer with the group, and head of distribution Tony Zulli departed the firm two weeks ago.
“Mark left quite some time ago and we have just been trying to refocus it [Pivotal] in this different market. We want to have a particular risk focus around it,” Minto told InvestorDaily.
“Tony has just moved on [earlier this month]. We had actually brought in Tony to do a wider job in Tower than just managing Pivotal,” he said.
“So his role was a wider role and so we have made some internal organisation changes in Tower and we are just gearing things up for the future.”
Minto would not be drawn on why Schroeder left the group. The reason for Zulli’s departure is also not entirely known, with Minto suggesting he was made redundant because of tough markets.
He said Tower had made less than “double figures” in redundancies in the past month due to poor markets.
“[There have been] very few [redundancies]. It is more about refocusing roles, changing accountabilities,” he said.
Minto also quashed suggestions the restructure of Pivotal was part of plans to redeploy the dealer group within Tower’s existing retail division.
“We have got no current plans to merge it [Pivotal] with any other dealer group,” he said.
Pivotal will now come under the reporting of Tower executive Pat O’Connor. Maria Cheer is acting as the executive manager of Pivotal.
