Analyst moves: legalsuper, Mercer, E&P

The $6 billion legalsuper has hired a senior investment analyst after last week appointing a new investment head and chief commercial officer.

Charith Witharanage has a strong background in investment research, trade execution, and performance analytics, bringing quantitative skills to the super fund for the legal community.

He joins from Lonsec, where he worked as an associate investment analyst, arriving from JB Were, where he spent four years as an advice analyst.

He earlier worked as an associate in the National Australia Bank's negotiated pricing team.

There, he negotiated the pricing of retail and wholesale deposit products based on daily bank swap changes, internal cost measures and market analysis.

Other responsibilities included product management, auditing of internal pricing discretions and market data analysis.

Last week, legalsuper chief executive Luke Symons announced three key executive hires, including a new investment chief.

The other two appointments were Colin Adamson as chief commercial officer and Alissa Knight to run the chief executive and strategy office.

Meantime, Hamish Frazer has departed Cbus Super to join E&P Financial Group as a research associate.

He was with the superannuation fund for construction workers for just over a year.

Finally, Diana Santibanez has joined Mercer Australia as a sustainable investment analyst.

Previously she held similar roles at JANA Investment Advisors and UniSuper.

Before switching to ESG, she was a private wealth analyst at JB Were, a fund manager at Santander Asset Management and an equities analyst at PentaBanco.