Minister recruits leading banker

LEADING banker Angus Barker is joining Trade and Investment Minister Andrew Robb's team as an adviser from next week.

LEADING investment banker Angus Barker is joining Trade and Investment Minister Andrew Robb's team as an adviser from next week.

The recruitment of Mr Barker, managing director of Flagstaff Partners corporate advisory firm, completes a high-level, hand-picked team to drive the government's "open for business" policy.

This also includes as trade adviser Lyall Howard, who has strong agricultural links and has held senior jobs with Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton.

It is understood that Mr Barker is seen by Mr Robb to have the specific experience required to help him to pursue an aggressive investment agenda. The minister has said he wants to view investment through a commercial prism.

A spokesman for the minister said yesterday: "Mr Barker will help in identifying opportunity, as well as helping join some of the dots to aid investment. He will play a major role in terms of outreach and consultation with the private sector."

Mr Barker, 45, grew up in country Victoria. After graduating from the University of Melbourne with first-class honours in commerce, he took a masters of philosophy at Cambridge University, majoring in economics and finance.

After working in London for three years, he spent 17 years in Asia and Australia -- chiefly based in Hong Kong -- for firms that merged into UBS. After two years as UBS's head of mergers and acquisitions for Asia, he moved in 2007 to Deutsche Bank as a managing director. Last year he moved to Flagstaff, where he has been a managing director and partner.

"I think it's going to be a very interesting opportunity to make a contribution to a government with a pretty ambitious pro-investment agenda," he said yesterday. "It feels the right time to make a contribution in a new way. I'm very much looking forward to it, after decades of advisory experience with major corporations, resulting in the sort of connectivity and insights which the minister will be looking to bring to bear in his portfolio."

Mr Barker believes it is positive to have more people willing to move between business and government. "When the minister calls, there's only one answer," he said.

The more exchange between the two, "the better the policy outcomes", he said, aided by "a more consultative and less interventionist government that is focused on growing the pie, to the benefit of both employees and the country as a whole".

Mr Barker is chairman of the alumni council for Melbourne University's business and economics faculty.