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Global Business Leader    +1 312 902 7941 E-mail Stacy Scapino   Stacy is the global director for the Mercer Sentinel® Group, a specialist business unit within Mercer's investment consulting business. Stacy has 17 years of experience within the pension, investment and banking industries. Prior to assuming the role of global director for the Mercer Sentinel® Group, Stacy led the UK implementation consulting teams and was globally responsible for Mercer’s investment consulting initiatives in consulting to multinational corporations. Prior to joining Mercer in the UK, she was based in Mercer’s Chicago, Illinois office, where she led the United States custody and asset administration team and the defined contribution resource centre. Stacy came to Mercer from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, where she was a senior financial analyst responsible for research and policy development in bank supervision. Her primary responsibilities were to provide federal reserve senior management and the federal reserve board of governors with analyses related to domestic and international capital markets, accounting and capital adequacy issues. Stacy has a Bachelor of Science in finance from the University of Illinois and a Master of Arts in international economics and European history from the Johns Hopkins University Paul Nitze School for Advanced International Studies. She is a CFA Charterholder.

	Marian Azer		Yunita Helmawan		Ruth Pang
	Jamil Barmania		Matthew Heeney		Craig Plane
	Cathy Barnett		Nathan Lim		Robin Solomon
	Lounarda David		Nick McDonald		Pushkar Thakur

Asia Pacific

+61 2 8864 6925 E-mail

Lounarda David

Lounarda is a principal and senior consultant within the Mercer Sentinel® Group in Mercer's investment consulting business. Lounarda leads the team in Australia and Asia and consults to clients on all issues associated with custody, transitions and the administration of investment portfolio. She is based in Sydney. 

Joining Mercer in 1998, Lounarda has over 20 years’ experience in the investment and financial services industry. Previously holding the position of Vice President of a major custodian bank, she has also worked on a number of large outsourcing projects and asset transitions for investment managers and superannuation funds. She has built a sound technical and operational background in custody, investment manager back office, project management, transition management and specialised investment administration services. 

Lounarda holds a Bachelor of Business with majors in Accounting and Economics.

+61 2 8864 6426 E-mail

Marian Azer

Marian is a principal and senior consultant within the Mercer Sentinel® Group in Mercer's investment consulting business. Marian consults to clients on all issues associated with accounting, custody, transitions and the administration of investment portfolios. She is based in Sydney. 

Marian joined Mercer in January 2006 and has over 10 years’ experience in the financial services, funds management and superannuation industry. Marian’s expertise includes relationship management, custody and back office services, business development and the technical and practical application of superannuation and investment administration. 

Marian holds a degree in Economics (Accounting) and is an Associate of the Certified Practising Accountants of Australia.

+61 2 8864 6208 E-mail

Jamil Barmania 

Jamil is a senior associate of Mercer Sentinel® Group in Mercer’s investment consulting business. Jamil consults to clients on all issues associated with custody, asset transitions, investment operations and corporate governance. He is based in Sydney.

Jamil joined Sentinel in 2008 with over 10 years of experience in the financial services, funds management and superannuation industry. Most recently he has focused on operational efficiency and risk controls. Prior to this he spent over four years working for an investment management firm in London along side portfolio managers and equity analysts in portfolio construction and maintenance for large institutional clients.

Jamil holds a Master of Business Administration from Copenhagen Business School, Denmark, a Bachelor of Arts (Anthropology) from McMaster University, Canada and the Investment Management Certificate (UK).

+61 2 8864 6524 E-mail

Cathy Barnett

Cathy Barnett is a senior associate and senior consultant within the Mercer Sentinel® Group in Mercer's investment consulting business. Cathy consults to clients on custody, transitions, back office and investment administration issues. She is based in the Sydney office.

Cathy joined Mercer in 2005 and has over five years’ experience in the financial services and funds management industry. Cathy worked for Mercer's investment consulting business in London where she was involved in providing a full range of investment consulting services to a number of small and medium sized clients.

Cathy holds a degree in Pharmacology from the University of Leeds.

+61 2 8864 6846 E-mail

Matthew Heeney

Matthew is a senior associate within the Mercer Sentinel® Group in Mercer’s investment consulting business. Matthew consults to clients on all issues associated with valuations, custody, complex asset transitions, unit pricing, investment operations and corporate governance. He is based in Sydney.

Matthew joined Mercer in 2009 with over 15 years’ experience in the financial services, funds management and superannuation industry. His most recent role was at AMP Life where he was Manager of Investment Management.  Prior to that Matthew worked for four years at ipac Investment Services in Investment Operations. Other previous roles include stints at Tactical Global Management and the Reserve Bank of Australia. Matthew has a broad financial services background. His expertise includes asset transitions, securities lending, investment operations, business solutions and reengineering, derivatives, outsourcing, governance and custodian management. 

Matthew holds a Bachelor of Economics (Honours) and a Masters of Applied Finance from Macquarie University.

+61 2 8864 6863 E-mail

Yunita Helmawan 

Yunita is an analyst of Mercer Sentinel® Group in Mercer’s investment consulting business. Yunita consults to clients on all issues associated with accounting, custody, transitions and the administration of investment portfolios. She is based in Sydney.

Yunita joined Sentinel in 2008 with over four years’ experience in the financial services, funds management and superannuation industries. Her recent experience is as a business analyst specialising in projects involving unit pricing as well as fees for a Superannuation fund.

Yunita holds a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics (Statistics and Finance) from University of Technology, Sydney.

+61 2 8864 6170 E-mail

Nathan Lim

Nathan is an analyst of Mercer Sentinel® Group in Mercer’s investment consulting business. Nathan consults to clients on all issues associated with accounting, custody, transitions and the administration of investment portfolios. He is based in Sydney.

Nathan joined Sentinel in 2008 with over four years of experience in the financial services, funds management and superannuation industries. In his previous roles he has gained exposure to various middle office functions including cash forecasting, trade management, securities pricing and unit pricing. He has also worked for one of the largest Global custodian in the Australian market.

Nathan holds a Bachelor of Commerce (finance and economics) from the University of Sydney.

+852 2116 5089 E-mail

Nick McDonald

Nick is a senior associate of the Mercer Sentinel® Group in Mercer’s investment consulting business. He consults on custody; back office, investment administration and unitisation issues. Nick is based in Hong Kong.  

Nick joined the Sydney office in April 2007 with 19 years of experience with leading Australian and international corporations and his own financial services consultancy business. One of Nick’s strengths is his technical capability related to working on complex financial transactions for the delivery of financial reporting products. He has worked on projects such as the introduction of hedge fund administration, middle/back office outsourcing and for Sentinel on several securities lending program and transition manager consulting reviews.  

Nick holds a Bachelor of Business (Majors-Accounting/Finance sub major Tax Law) from the University of Technology Sydney. He is also a Member of Institute of Chartered Accountants, a Member of the Tax Institute of Australia and a Member of ACSA working groups.

+65 6398 2867 E-mail

Ruth Pang

Ruth is a principal of Mercer Sentinel® Group of Mercer’s investment consulting business. Ruth consults to clients on all issues associated with custody, transitions and investment operations assessments. She is based in Singapore.

Ruth has 22 years of experience in the investment and financial services industry - Arthur Andersen, Bankers Trust, and most recently, Government of Singapore Investment Corporation (GIC).
At GIC, she played a key role in the set up of the External Fund Management Department (EFMD) and in the implementation of policies, procedures, systems and reporting for the department. She was principally responsible for the pre-investment operational due diligence reviews and ongoing monitoring of external investment managers. She also worked closely with GIC's supporting departments in the oversight and monitoring of the department’s service providers such as custodians, securities lending agents, transition managers, prime brokers and fund administrators.

Prior to joining EFMD, she was Head of Investment Monitoring in the Risk & Performance Management Department of GIC, responsible for designing and implementing investment limits and guidelines to control market, credit, liquidity and other forms of investment risks across the firm covering all asset classes in public markets, internal and externally managed portfolios. She supervised the implementation of firm-wide investment monitoring system from evaluation stage to user acceptance testing stage to ‘go-live’ stage. She was also responsible for designing and implementing operational risk policies and procedures.

Ruth holds a Bachelor of Accountancy (Honours) from the National University of Singapore and is Fellow at the Institute of Public Accountants of Singapore (ICPAS), Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) and CPA Australia.

+61 2 8864 6235 E-mail

Craig Plane

Craig is an associate of Mercer Sentinel® Group in Mercer’s investment consulting business. Craig consults on all issues associated with accounting, custody, transitions and the administration of investment portfolios. He is based in Sydney.

He joined Mercer in July 2007 from the investment control division at MLC where he was responsible for unit pricing, preparation of financial and regulatory reporting, liaising with third party custodians as well as transition managers and other service providers. He has contributed to the development of governance policies and procedures and monitoring the investment activities. Previously as an investment analyst he gained practical experience researching equities, conducting capital raisings and a superannuation fund merger.

Craig holds a Bachelor of Commerce (Accounting) from Macquarie University and is a Chartered Accountant.  He is a member of the Institute of Actuaries.

Robin Solomon

Robin Solomon is a principal and senior consultant within the Mercer Sentinel® Group in Mercer's investment consulting business. Robin consults to clients on all issues associated with custody, back office, investment administration and transitions. He is based in Sydney.

Robin has over 19 years’ experience in the investment and financial services industry. His previous experience included equities settlement in Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia and Australia and transactional accounting functions including custody and fund accounting. Robin has a broad financial services background including general and project management. He has been responsible for numerous system implementations, business reengineering projects and asset and operational transitions.

Robin holds a degree in Psychology.

+61 2 8864 6754 E-mail

Pushkar Thakur

Pushkar is an associate within the  Mercer Sentinel® Group in Mercer’s investment consulting business. Pushkar consults to clients on all issues associated with asset transitions, valuations, custody, unit pricing, investment operations and corporate governance. He is based in Sydney.

Pushkar joined Mercer Sentinel in 2009 with nearly six years of experience in the areas of investment banking, funds management, strategy consulting and operations. His previous roles include three years in third party funds and operations management area of Tata Motors, India. As operations manager, Pushkar’s responsibilities included day to day resource management, overseeing operations efficiency and internally consulting on process efficiency improvements. Subsequently, as a head of a line of business he was responsible for driving the overall strategy and ensuring bottom line performances.

Pushkar also brings practical due diligence and financial modelling skills having worked for Macquarie Bank’s investment banking team as well as for Mercer’s finance and risk consulting area.

Pushkar holds a MBA in Finance & Strategy from the Indian School of Business and also has a Bachelor of Technology in mechanical engineering from the Indian School of Mines. He also holds a post graduate qualification in mass communication and journalism from the Symbiosis Institute of Mass Communication, India.

Mercer is a leading global provider of investment consulting services, and offers customized guidance at every stage of the investment decision, risk management and investment monitoring process. We have been dedicated to meeting the needs of clients for more than 30 years, and we work with the fiduciaries of pension funds, foundations, endowments and other investors in some 35 countries. We assist with every aspect of institutional investing (and retail portfolios in some geographies), from strategy, structure and implementation to ongoing portfolio management. We create value through our commitment to thought leadership; world-class, independent research; and top-notch consultants with local expertise.