Suggestions that more than 20 member firms and three large-sized breakaway groups are set to depart Professional Investment Services (PIS) are untrue, the dealer group’s managing director has said.
“It is malicious gossip,” PIS managing director Grahame Evans told InvestorDaily.
“We’ve taken a number of top firms into a discussion around the nature of the business and where we are going with things and we’re not getting those sorts of messages from people at all.
“In fact, the biggest message we are getting from people is that they are a little peed off that we keep getting people like this making these sorts of things – that would be the biggest issue.”
It is believed an unnamed adviser within PIS began circulating the rumours of an imminent mass exodus from the dealer group last week, after ASIC called on PIS to pay compensation for its involvement in the Westpoint group of companies.
“The issue, from an adviser perspective, is that a small percentage of advisers used Westpoint around less than 10 per cent, they didn’t receive the big commissions that people were talking about and our belief has always been that the problem was not as a result of the investment, it was actually a result of alleged management practices,” Evans said.
“I suppose for those advisers who worry about us supporting these issues it is irrelevant whether it’s Westpoint or if it’s Macquarie Bank.
“The issue is that these are our advisers, they gave this advice in good faith and in the interest of their clients and as usual the adviser is the recipient of all the bad press.”
In regards to the firm’s involvement in collapsed agribusiness firms Great Southern and Timbercorp, the biggest issue is whether the collapses were the result of corporate failure and not product failure, he said.
“There’s a big difference. But everyone wants to drag it back to advisers and I do not believe that the majority of our advisers, and I’m talking across the board – not just PIS advisers – don’t act in the interest of clients in all cases,” Evans said.
