Hamilton Lane appoints head of private wealth in Australia

Private markets investment manager, Hamilton Lane, has announced an expansion of its business in Australia, with a new appointment of Scott Thomas to a newly-created role of head of private wealth, Australia.

He will be responsible for further expansion of the firm’s distribution efforts and will be based in Hamilton Lane’s Sydney office, which will now have nine professionals across portfolio management, client solutions and operations teams.

Thomas joined from Invesco where he most recently served as director of investment strategy and was responsible for working with the sales teams to enhance relationships across wholesale and institutional channels to identify, educate, communicate and coordinate investment strategies of focus, including how these strategies are best presented to market.

He also held a product director/investment specialist position within Invesco’s Absolute Return Multi-Asset team in the UK and other senior sales roles at the firm.

Prior to Invesco, he held sales and business development roles with BT Investment Management, Pinnacle Investment Management Group and Macquarie Group.

The firm said the move came in response to a growing demand for private markets investment in the region due to a historical outperformance of this asset class, with its Global Private Assets Fund having managed to attract more than $1.5 billion over the last four years since it was launched.

The fund is available to wholesale investors and advised clients in Australia and New Zealand, Canada, parts of Europe, Asia, Latin America and the Middle East.

Commenting on this appointment, James Martin, head of international client solutions, said: “We are committed to bringing private markets to more Australian investors, and delighted to welcome Scott to our growing team. We seek to continue building long term relationships and serving a sophisticated and expanding set of clients throughout Australia.”