Mercury Asset Management seeks chief for new-look marketing team

Mercury Asset Management, the investment company, is searching for a marketing director to head its marketing department, which is soon to be reorganised.

The department will be restructured in the wake of two senior departures.

Existing marketing director Richard Clarke is quitting to set up his own marketing consultancy and the company is searching for a replacement.

Catherine Whittaker, associate director of marketing for retail funds, is leaving the company to become the first head of marketing at Norwich Union Trust Managers.

Marketing will be split into new business and client services teams instead of direct marketing to consumers and independent financial adviser marketing.

Two members of the MAM marketing department will head the new divisions. Roxanne Parker will take over client services and Rick Andrews will run new business.

Richard Royds, managing director of UK retail business at MAM, says: “The skill-sets for the two functions are very different.”

Branding for MAM in the UK has yet to be finalised. MAM was bought by US investment bank and stock broker Merrill Lynch for 3.1bn in November 1997 and it is understood that the company may be renamed Merrill Lynch Mercury Asset Management.

J Walter Thompson won the $90m (56m) Merrill Lynch worldwide advertising account in July. But Royds says there are no plans to review MAM’s account out of DMB&B Financial, which has held the business for five years.