Davy recruits investment strategist chief from UBS

ONE MORE THING:STOCKBROKER DAVY has significantly beefed up its private clients division by head-hunting Brian O'Reilly from UBS, where he was head of research at its wealth management arm in the UK.

O’Reilly joins Davy as director of investment strategy, where he will have 200 staff under his wing.

He will be responsible for shaping Davy’s global investment strategy and asset allocation for the private wealth division, which has assets worth €8 billion.

You might recall that Davy bolstered its private clients arm earlier this year with the addition of Bloxham Stockbrokers.

O’Reilly will also be a member of the Davy investment committee, and will focus on tactical asset allocation, specialising in regional and sectoral allocation within the broker’s portfolios.

At UBS O’Reilly advised some of Britain’s wealthiest individuals. He was also a member of the chief investment office research team at UBS, which was responsible for about £200 billion of assets under management.

Previously, O’Reilly was a global equity strategist at UBS Investment Bank in New York. He began his career as an analyst at Goldman Sachs International.

O’Reilly has been a busy bee, writing extensively on macroeconomic and investment strategy, lecturing at the London Business School and appearing regularly on Bloomberg and CNBC. He was one of the first to warn about the impending Irish banking crisis in 2008, while also sounding warning bells early on how the Government may have to renege on the Croke Park deal with public sector trade unions.

His views were brushed aside in some quarters here, notably by former Anglo Irish Bank chief executive David Drumm. Now that he’ll be togging out for Davy, it will be interesting to see if O’Reilly tempers his views on the state of the Irish economy what with Dublin being a village and all that.