Maple-Brown Abbott hires emerging markets head

Boutique investment manager Maple-Brown Abbott has appointed John Moorhead to the newly created role of head of global emerging markets ahead of launching a new GEM fund next year.

Moorhead who has relocated to Sydney to join Maple-Brown Abbott will report to the firm's chief executive Sophia Rahmani and investment chief Garth Rossler.

In this role, Moorhead will work with senior management to build out the business's emerging markets capability as well as serve as lead portfolio manager and investment analyst.

Additionally, he will recruit additional investment analysts for the new offering.

Moorhead was most recently head of emerging market equities with Pictet Asset Management in London where he led a team of 20 investors managing US$6 billion in assets.

Joining Pictet in 2008, he held the roles of co-portfolio manager and head of emerging markets research before being appointed head of emerging market equities in 2017.

Before this, he worked at Macquarie Bank as a research analyst, initially in Sydney before moving to London.

He started his career as a mining engineer at BHP Billiton in 2002.

Commenting on the appointment, Rahmani said Moorhead's outstanding track record in GEM equities and his focus on sustainable investing, made him the ideal person to set up the new product.

"A key component of our growth strategy is to actively seek opportunities to develop new offerings for investors, both through organic growth of existing capabilities and through acquisition, and GEM is a natural fit for our business," she said.

"Investing in GEM provides investors with the opportunity to gain exposure to some of the largest and fastest-growing economies globally. In the past 20 years, emerging markets have risen from a quarter of world GDP to now close to half, while its equity markets are still a fraction of the size of those in the developed world."

Moorhead said one of the main attractions of joining Maple-Brown Abbott is the long history of investing in Asian emerging markets, backed by a deep and experienced Asian investment team.

"Focusing on sustainable returns and valuations is core to my investment approach. It means investing for the long term and looking not just at the ESG risks that can be so important in emerging markets, but beyond that to those companies that can benefit multiple stakeholders to generate those sustainably high returns."