UK – Ian Paterson Brown is to step down as chief financial officer F&C Asset Management by “mutual agreement”.

He follows chief investment officer Tony Broccardo as the latest senior executive to leave under new chief executive Alain Grisay.

A spokesman said it was a “correct interpretation” that Grisay was fashioning his own team – adding that Grisay had taken measures to streamline management and cut bureaucracy.

The company, formed by the merger of F&C and ISIS, said Paterson Brown, who’s in his 50s, would leave at the annual general meeting in May.

Grisay, who took over from Howard Carter at the start of this year, said in a statement: “Ian has served the company for over 24 years and more recently has played a leading role in delivering the merger cost synergies identified in our December trading update.

“The board would like to take this opportunity to thank Ian for his outstanding contribution to F&C and its predecessor companies.

“The nomination committee and the board have now commenced the task of identifying a successor.”

The spokesman said Patterson Brown has a number of business interests and stressed that he would be working right through to the AGM. He added that the firm’s finance department would remain in Edinburgh.

"The company now has three months in which to identify and recruit a new CFO and this strikes us as a challenging time-scale," said broking firm Bridgewell Securities in a research note on F&C.

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