The managing director of Gresham Advisory Partners' Western Australian office, Justin Mannolini, quit the firm yesterday and has been replaced by new co-heads Darren Martin and Julian Mills.
After five years with the Perth office, Mr Mannolini has tendered his resignation to pursue a new career path. It’s understood Mr Mannolini is only required to take four weeks as gardening leave, a relatively short restriction period by industry standards.
It is unclear as to whether Mr Mannolini has committed to a new employer. With several major investment banks having been in the market for a WA head during the past two years, such a locally connected player would appear to have strong opportunities within the sector.
While Sydney-based Gresham's national business, which includes a private equity side, has reportedly had a loss-making year, the WA advisory business has had local successes during the past 12 months. It has advised on six transactions, mainly on the target or vendor side, worth a combined total of nearly $600 million.
These were all in its preferred mergers and acquisitions space. The biggest of those was the the takover of Little World Beverages by Lion for $380 million, a deal brought in by Mr Mannolini who had advised on the brewing group's listing during an ealier career as a corporate lawyer.
The other deals were broadly spread around the most senior people in the small Perth office, namely Mr Mannolini, Mr Martin and Mr Mills.
Mr Mannolini has held the top Perth job since early 2010 when he took over from Michael Ashforth, who joined Macquarie Capital’s WA office.
At the time, Mr Mannolini told WA Business News that he would be, in essence, sharing the Perth leadership role with Mr Mills as well as senior banker Jenny Seabrook who, at that stage, had moved to a part-time role with the advisory firm due to a growing number of external directorships.
Mr Mannolini declined to comment on his plans when contacted by WA Business News today.
