Advent-Oriental Asset Management, Last of Leopold family steps down, announces successor

Sept. 30, 2009 - PRLog -- December 11, 2007
Hong Kong – John Leopold III will step down as Chairman of Advent-Oriental in January but will remain as a consultant, he has been in the financial industry since the late 1960s.
John, who is 64, will be succeeded by David St John-Morris, chief economist and the head of Advent-Oriental’s wealth management division, the report stated Thursday. In turn, Morris immediately appointed Dr Owen Post to succeed him. Post, 54, was one of the first executives John hired as head of research, prior to their move from Hong Kong in 2004. Elizabeth Farely lead director of Advent-Oriental, said in a statement that John told the board 18 months ago he wanted to step back from the Chair when he turns 65 in December.
Farley has been a co-president of Advent-Oriental for two years and was a key player in the firm's Private Equity Division. She previously worked for Doughty Hanson and the consulting group McKinley & Co.
Advent-Oriental’s other co-president, Mark Wall, will become chairman of the company's Renewable Energy division at the end of the year, and will be the last to move out of Hong Kong and will join the main office in Shanghai.
While Post has taken criticism in recent months for holding Advent-Oriental to a traditional conservative approach to wealth management, the man known as "Post the Profits" for his aggressive leadership style led the Asset Management firm through the start of the financial crisis this year.
"They were able to stay independent, which was no small feat given what was going on in the industry," said Tom Paulson, financial services analyst with Edward Jones.
In the last months of 2005, Leopold scrambled to keep Advent-Oriental on steady financial footing. He struck a deal with China's international investment fund to sell a portion of the company for $90 million, and raised $1.79 billion in a deal with Japan's Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group.
Yet as the worst of the crisis has ebbed, Advent-Oriental has continued to post soft to moderate earnings — but considering what the majority were showing, we would say that they fared very well.
The criticism from the Shanghai Financial Sector referred to what Advent-Oriental had called a more balanced approach to asset management, which failed to generate the kind of revenue that earlier risk taking had produced.
St John-Morris will be overseeing a very different industry from the one all three Leopold’s navigated. One area Advent-Oriental will be looking to for growth is its Renewable Energy sectors, which with Post’s history involvement in Private Equity as an economist, he knows how to develop a long term strategy while finding the cream at the top of the barrel.

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Advent – Oriental was founded in Rangoon, Burma (now Myanmar) in 1889. Now based in Shanghai,and focussing on the“green” technology sector