Plato’s team consists of highly experienced investment professionals, portfolio managers, and quantitative analysts all working together to deliver attractive investment outcomes for their clients.
Our Team
Our Team
Plato’s team consists of highly experienced investment professionals, portfolio managers, and quantitative analysts all working together to deliver attractive investment outcomes for their clients.
Don has over 30 years investment management experience and founded Plato Investment Management Limited in 2006. Don has written a number of white papers on after tax investing and has spoken at many conferences and seminars on this subject.
Prior to Plato Don was Head of Active Equities, Asia Pacific and a member of the global Senior Management Group at State Street Global Advisors, responsible for over $10B in active and enhanced equity investments.
Don previously held various positions at Westpac Investment Management, including Chief Investment Officer, Head of Equities where he managed the $1B Tax Effective Share Fund, a Westpac appointed director on the board of Hastings Funds Management and was instrumentally involved in the mergers of BT and Rothschild. Prior to Westpac Don was a senior analyst at Queensland Investment Corporation.
Don has a strong interest in responsible investment and governance. Don is the deputy chair of ESG RA and has served on the ASX Corporate Governance Council.
Don was a Lecturer in Finance at the University of Queensland (UQ) for 6 years, and was a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan Business School. Don has a PhD in Finance and a Bachelor of Commerce with First Class Honours from UQ, and a University Medal.
Manoj joined Plato in April 2007. Manoj was formerly Director, Quantitative Portfolio Manager at Hachibushu Capital in Japan where he was responsible for designing, developing and managing a quantitative long short Asia Pacific (including Australia) strategy within a multiple strategy hedge fund.
Manoj previously worked as a Quantitative Analyst at Nikko Citigroup, Tokyo where he was responsible for researching and developing trade ideas using quantitative models.
Manoj has a Bachelor of Engineering (Computer Science) First Class with Distinction from the University of Poona, India, and an MBA from McGill University, Canada. His master’s thesis was titled “Sector Rotation Model for the Japanese Market.
David has more than two decades’ experience investing in global equities. The majority of David's career has been spent managing long/short strategies in London. He worked for JP Morgan Asset Management in London for fifteen years becoming one of the youngest managing directors in the firm’s history. He managed the JP Morgan Europe Equity Plus active-extension fund which was closed to new investors after growing to €6 billion, generating 4% p.a. net alpha over ten years. He also launched and managed the JP Morgan Europe Equity Absolute Alpha Market Neutral fund. In its first twelve months of operation, the fund returned over 20%, and grew assets to €1 bn. In 2014 he was the European Hedge Fund Manager of the Year (UCITS).
Upon returning to his hometown of Sydney in 2018, David joined Plato Investment Management. He is the firm’s Co-Head of Research, Head of Long/Short Strategies and Portfolio Manager of the Plato Global Alpha Fund.
Before commencing his investment management career, David was a professional rugby union player. He is currently the President of Eastern Suburbs Rugby Club. He holds a Bachelor of Business with First Class Honours from University of Technology, Sydney, and a PhD from Cambridge in Quantitative Finance.
Peter is a founder of Plato and has over 18 years investment experience. Peter is a Senior Portfolio Manager at Plato and manages the Plato Australian Shares Income Fund.
Peter received 1st Class Honours and a PhD from The University of New South Wales where his thesis topic was behaviour of Australian active investment managers. He has previous worked at Macquarie Bank, Mercer and ING.
Todd joined Plato in the first quarter of 2011. At Plato he has developed domestic investment strategies utilising minimum variance techniques, as well as researching and developing techniques for successfully integrating ESG and CO2 objectives into investment processes.
Todd was previously Head of Asia Pacific ex Japan Active Equities at State Street Global Advisors where he was responsible for portfolio management and overseeing research into quantitative stock selection models, alpha generation, portfolio construction and ESG development.
Todd previously worked at Barra specialising in portfolio construction, risk analysis and performance attribution. Previous to Barra Todd has worked as Head of Equity Derivative Research Asia Pacific ex Japan at Merrill Lynch, producing quantitative research and strategies as part of his 30 year plus financial career.
Todd has a Bachelor of Science (Griffith University), Graduate Diploma of Applied Finance (SIA) and a Master of Applied Finance (Macquarie) where he presented his thesis for prediction of futures markets movements with an artificial intelligence expert system.
Chanel joined Plato from Cbus, where she was a quantitative portfolio manager. She led the design and management of an Australian Mid and Small Cap portfolio, researched Emerging market and Low Volatility strategies and served as a member of the Equity Portfolio Construction Committee. Before that, she was a senior quantitative analyst at Macquarie, where she published research on various topics, ranging from refinements to traditional factor-based strategies to incorporating machine learning and natural language processing techniques into investment processes. She also spent more than a decade with NinetyOne, a global investment firm, where she gained experience designing and managing systematic strategies ranging from enhanced index and active long-only to hedge funds.
Chanel holds an MPhil specialising in Mathematical Finance from the University of Cape Town, a BComm (Honours 1st Class) in Computer Science, and a BComm degree in Mathematics from the University of Stellenbosch.
Daniel joined Plato in November 2015. Prior to Plato, Daniel was a Portfolio Manager at Realindex Investments, a subsidiary of Colonial First State group, focused on Smart Beta solutions for clients. As the lead manager, he was responsible for all Developed and Emerging Market equity products.
Daniel has also held positions at State Street Global Advisors (SSGA) in Sydney and London. In Sydney, Daniel worked in the Global Structured Products Group as a Senior Investment Manager. He was responsible for managing a broad range of strategies including ETFs, After Tax mandates, Smart Beta and optimised portfolios.
In London, Daniel managed active strategies to a model portfolio and a range of global indexed products. Daniel began his career at Schroders.
Daniel has a Bachelor of Science with Honours from the University of Birmingham and holds the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) designation. Daniel is a member of both the Chartered Financial Analyst Institute and the CFA Society of Sydney. Daniel is RG146 compliant and is the chair of the Plato ESG Committee.
George has over 28 years’ experience in investment management.
Before joining Plato, George worked at Manning Asset Management and Macquarie Group for over 24 years. George started his career in the Research and Development arm of the Macquarie Funds Group, before moving to the Macquarie Securities Group as a quantitative analyst. In this role, George built and managed a highly rated Global Quantitative Equity Research group. George then moved back into the Funds Group, as Head of Research for Quant Hedge Funds, where he was responsible for maintaining and innovating the systematic inputs into the Asian, European and Americas Market Neutral Equity Hedge Funds.
George has a Bachelor of Science Degree with Honours from the University of Western Australia.
Jonathan Whiteoak joined Plato at the beginning of 2015. He has over 25 years of investment experience researching Australian, Asian and global equities, most recently as Head of the Advanced Research Center in Sydney within State Street Global Advisors.
At State Street, Jonathan undertook research into quantitative stock selection, the development of alpha forecasting models, and portfolio construction techniques covering long-only, long-short, and 130/30 style strategies. He also led a number of global taskforces involved with the development of global datasets of proprietary factors, and research into factor selection and dynamic active equity models. He has conducted research into alternative beta strategies, and Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) issues, including the development of methods to directly incorporate ESG signals into the portfolio construction process.
Jonathan has a Bachelor of Science degree with First Class Honours, majoring in physics, from The University of Sydney. He went on to obtain a PhD in the field of Astrophysics, with his dissertation involving a survey of the southern plane of our galaxy at radio frequencies, which resulted in the discovery of new celestial objects that led to publications in such scientific journals as “Nature”.
Charles joined Plato in late 2019 as a senior quantitative analyst, focusing on the global market neutral strategy. He was previously at Macquarie for 12 years, most recently a Division Director in their Quant Hedge Funds team which he joined in 2012. Prior to QHF, Charles was a member of Macquarie Securities' quantitative research team in Sydney. He moved to New York in 2010 as a quant analyst focusing on North American equities. Prior to joining Macquarie, Charles worked as an analyst at Commonwealth Bank of Australia, and subsequently Freehills. Charles holds a Bachelor of Commerce degree from the University of New South Wales, with an Actuarial Studies major.
Wilson Thong joins Plato from State Street Global Markets, where he held the position of FX Consultant, responsible for integrating the FX Connect trading platform within Australia. Prior to that, Wilson held various roles at State Street Global Advisors (SSgA), beginning in the project management team and advancing to a pivotal role as Senior Quantitative Analyst in the Advanced Research Center. During his tenure at SSgA, he contributed to the development of proprietary global factor libraries, was part of a global taskforce focused on enhancing the suite of active equity models and worked on dynamic equity models for the Australian market, as well as broader Asia Pacific developed and emerging markets.
At Plato, Wilson currently oversees all aspects of automation, encompassing production processes, compliance and reporting functions. He is also the creator of PRISM, a proprietary business intelligence platform used as a risk assessment and management tool across all Plato funds. PRISM visualises Plato’s quantitative factors, proprietary red flags model, portfolio factor/ESG/risk exposures, portfolio attribution, while also showcases the impact of market disruptions through a range of stress tests and scenario analyses.
Wilson holds a BSc in Computing Science from the University of Technology Sydney and a Graduate Diploma of Applied Finance from FINSIA. He also possesses a suite of Microsoft certifications including DP-300, DP-600, DP-700 and AI-102, which span wide ranging disciplines such as software/data engineering, data analytics, business intelligence, data visualisation and artificial intelligence.
Phoebe joined Plato in 2021 as an Associate Analyst following the completion of a successful internship program in early 2021. Phoebe's primary responsibilities include completing research projects with a focus on ESG issues as well as providing general research and related support functions for the investment team. Phoebe has a Bachelor of Advanced Finance & Economics degree majoring in Finance (1st Class Honours & University Medal).
John’s role as Senior Portfolio Manager includes portfolio construction and management, system and risk model design and development, attribution analysis, and strategy research.
John brings to Plato over 35 years’ of financial markets experience having been involved in managing teams with four major Investment banks. His global experience in senior roles includes stints in London and Hong Kong.
John has specialised in structuring and managing strong performing investment funds that target after tax returns designed for specific outcomes, including low volatility, low drawdown and consistent income to investors. John’s most recent role was with Northward Capital where he was Executive Director/Portfolio Manager for the Northward Equity Income Fund and Ethical Equity Income Fund.
John has an extensive derivative background enabling him to originate and structure new products and ideas to meet individual client needs that are implemented in a robust risk management framework. He has worked across multi asset classes which gives him the capability to offer the right products and solutions to both retail and institutional investors.
Marcus joined Plato in early 2023 as an Associate Analyst, transitioning from a successful internship. With a practical understanding of machine learning and neural networks, Marcus specialises in leveraging Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques and harnessing the capabilities of Large Language Models (LLMs) to develop innovative investment strategies. Marcus is currently pursuing a double degree in Bachelor of Commerce and Honors in Mechatronic Engineering at the University of Sydney.
Don has over 30 years investment management experience and founded Plato Investment Management Limited in 2006. Don has written a number of white papers on after tax investing and has spoken at many conferences and seminars on this subject.
Prior to Plato Don was Head of Active Equities, Asia Pacific and a member of the global Senior Management Group at State Street Global Advisors, responsible for over $10B in active and enhanced equity investments.
Don previously held various positions at Westpac Investment Management, including Chief Investment Officer, Head of Equities where he managed the $1B Tax Effective Share Fund, a Westpac appointed director on the board of Hastings Funds Management and was instrumentally involved in the mergers of BT and Rothschild. Prior to Westpac Don was a senior analyst at Queensland Investment Corporation.
Don has a strong interest in responsible investment and governance. Don is the deputy chair of ESG RA and has served on the ASX Corporate Governance Council.
Don was a Lecturer in Finance at the University of Queensland (UQ) for 6 years, and was a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan Business School. Don has a PhD in Finance and a Bachelor of Commerce with First Class Honours from UQ, and a University Medal.
Manoj joined Plato in April 2007. Manoj was formerly Director, Quantitative Portfolio Manager at Hachibushu Capital in Japan where he was responsible for designing, developing and managing a quantitative long short Asia Pacific (including Australia) strategy within a multiple strategy hedge fund.
Manoj previously worked as a Quantitative Analyst at Nikko Citigroup, Tokyo where he was responsible for researching and developing trade ideas using quantitative models.
Manoj has a Bachelor of Engineering (Computer Science) First Class with Distinction from the University of Poona, India, and an MBA from McGill University, Canada. His master’s thesis was titled “Sector Rotation Model for the Japanese Market.
David has more than two decades’ experience investing in global equities. The majority of David's career has been spent managing long/short strategies in London. He worked for JP Morgan Asset Management in London for fifteen years becoming one of the youngest managing directors in the firm’s history. He managed the JP Morgan Europe Equity Plus active-extension fund which was closed to new investors after growing to €6 billion, generating 4% p.a. net alpha over ten years. He also launched and managed the JP Morgan Europe Equity Absolute Alpha Market Neutral fund. In its first twelve months of operation, the fund returned over 20%, and grew assets to €1 bn. In 2014 he was the European Hedge Fund Manager of the Year (UCITS).
Upon returning to his hometown of Sydney in 2018, David joined Plato Investment Management. He is the firm’s Co-Head of Research, Head of Long/Short Strategies and Portfolio Manager of the Plato Global Alpha Fund.
Before commencing his investment management career, David was a professional rugby union player. He is currently the President of Eastern Suburbs Rugby Club. He holds a Bachelor of Business with First Class Honours from University of Technology, Sydney, and a PhD from Cambridge in Quantitative Finance.
Peter is a founder of Plato and has over 18 years investment experience. Peter is a Senior Portfolio Manager at Plato and manages the Plato Australian Shares Income Fund.
Peter received 1st Class Honours and a PhD from The University of New South Wales where his thesis topic was behaviour of Australian active investment managers. He has previous worked at Macquarie Bank, Mercer and ING.
Todd joined Plato in the first quarter of 2011. At Plato he has developed domestic investment strategies utilising minimum variance techniques, as well as researching and developing techniques for successfully integrating ESG and CO2 objectives into investment processes.
Todd was previously Head of Asia Pacific ex Japan Active Equities at State Street Global Advisors where he was responsible for portfolio management and overseeing research into quantitative stock selection models, alpha generation, portfolio construction and ESG development.
Todd previously worked at Barra specialising in portfolio construction, risk analysis and performance attribution. Previous to Barra Todd has worked as Head of Equity Derivative Research Asia Pacific ex Japan at Merrill Lynch, producing quantitative research and strategies as part of his 30 year plus financial career.
Todd has a Bachelor of Science (Griffith University), Graduate Diploma of Applied Finance (SIA) and a Master of Applied Finance (Macquarie) where he presented his thesis for prediction of futures markets movements with an artificial intelligence expert system.
Chanel joined Plato from Cbus, where she was a quantitative portfolio manager. She led the design and management of an Australian Mid and Small Cap portfolio, researched Emerging market and Low Volatility strategies and served as a member of the Equity Portfolio Construction Committee. Before that, she was a senior quantitative analyst at Macquarie, where she published research on various topics, ranging from refinements to traditional factor-based strategies to incorporating machine learning and natural language processing techniques into investment processes. She also spent more than a decade with NinetyOne, a global investment firm, where she gained experience designing and managing systematic strategies ranging from enhanced index and active long-only to hedge funds.
Chanel holds an MPhil specialising in Mathematical Finance from the University of Cape Town, a BComm (Honours 1st Class) in Computer Science, and a BComm degree in Mathematics from the University of Stellenbosch.
Daniel joined Plato in November 2015. Prior to Plato, Daniel was a Portfolio Manager at Realindex Investments, a subsidiary of Colonial First State group, focused on Smart Beta solutions for clients. As the lead manager, he was responsible for all Developed and Emerging Market equity products.
Daniel has also held positions at State Street Global Advisors (SSGA) in Sydney and London. In Sydney, Daniel worked in the Global Structured Products Group as a Senior Investment Manager. He was responsible for managing a broad range of strategies including ETFs, After Tax mandates, Smart Beta and optimised portfolios.
In London, Daniel managed active strategies to a model portfolio and a range of global indexed products. Daniel began his career at Schroders.
Daniel has a Bachelor of Science with Honours from the University of Birmingham and holds the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) designation. Daniel is a member of both the Chartered Financial Analyst Institute and the CFA Society of Sydney. Daniel is RG146 compliant and is the chair of the Plato ESG Committee.
George has over 28 years’ experience in investment management.
Before joining Plato, George worked at Manning Asset Management and Macquarie Group for over 24 years. George started his career in the Research and Development arm of the Macquarie Funds Group, before moving to the Macquarie Securities Group as a quantitative analyst. In this role, George built and managed a highly rated Global Quantitative Equity Research group. George then moved back into the Funds Group, as Head of Research for Quant Hedge Funds, where he was responsible for maintaining and innovating the systematic inputs into the Asian, European and Americas Market Neutral Equity Hedge Funds.
George has a Bachelor of Science Degree with Honours from the University of Western Australia.
Jonathan Whiteoak joined Plato at the beginning of 2015. He has over 25 years of investment experience researching Australian, Asian and global equities, most recently as Head of the Advanced Research Center in Sydney within State Street Global Advisors.
At State Street, Jonathan undertook research into quantitative stock selection, the development of alpha forecasting models, and portfolio construction techniques covering long-only, long-short, and 130/30 style strategies. He also led a number of global taskforces involved with the development of global datasets of proprietary factors, and research into factor selection and dynamic active equity models. He has conducted research into alternative beta strategies, and Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) issues, including the development of methods to directly incorporate ESG signals into the portfolio construction process.
Jonathan has a Bachelor of Science degree with First Class Honours, majoring in physics, from The University of Sydney. He went on to obtain a PhD in the field of Astrophysics, with his dissertation involving a survey of the southern plane of our galaxy at radio frequencies, which resulted in the discovery of new celestial objects that led to publications in such scientific journals as “Nature”.
Charles joined Plato in late 2019 as a senior quantitative analyst, focusing on the global market neutral strategy. He was previously at Macquarie for 12 years, most recently a Division Director in their Quant Hedge Funds team which he joined in 2012. Prior to QHF, Charles was a member of Macquarie Securities' quantitative research team in Sydney. He moved to New York in 2010 as a quant analyst focusing on North American equities. Prior to joining Macquarie, Charles worked as an analyst at Commonwealth Bank of Australia, and subsequently Freehills. Charles holds a Bachelor of Commerce degree from the University of New South Wales, with an Actuarial Studies major.
Wilson Thong joins Plato from State Street Global Markets, where he held the position of FX Consultant, responsible for integrating the FX Connect trading platform within Australia. Prior to that, Wilson held various roles at State Street Global Advisors (SSgA), beginning in the project management team and advancing to a pivotal role as Senior Quantitative Analyst in the Advanced Research Center. During his tenure at SSgA, he contributed to the development of proprietary global factor libraries, was part of a global taskforce focused on enhancing the suite of active equity models and worked on dynamic equity models for the Australian market, as well as broader Asia Pacific developed and emerging markets.
At Plato, Wilson currently oversees all aspects of automation, encompassing production processes, compliance and reporting functions. He is also the creator of PRISM, a proprietary business intelligence platform used as a risk assessment and management tool across all Plato funds. PRISM visualises Plato’s quantitative factors, proprietary red flags model, portfolio factor/ESG/risk exposures, portfolio attribution, while also showcases the impact of market disruptions through a range of stress tests and scenario analyses.
Wilson holds a BSc in Computing Science from the University of Technology Sydney and a Graduate Diploma of Applied Finance from FINSIA. He also possesses a suite of Microsoft certifications including DP-300, DP-600, DP-700 and AI-102, which span wide ranging disciplines such as software/data engineering, data analytics, business intelligence, data visualisation and artificial intelligence.
Phoebe joined Plato in 2021 as an Associate Analyst following the completion of a successful internship program in early 2021. Phoebe's primary responsibilities include completing research projects with a focus on ESG issues as well as providing general research and related support functions for the investment team. Phoebe has a Bachelor of Advanced Finance & Economics degree majoring in Finance (1st Class Honours & University Medal).
John’s role as Senior Portfolio Manager includes portfolio construction and management, system and risk model design and development, attribution analysis, and strategy research.
John brings to Plato over 35 years’ of financial markets experience having been involved in managing teams with four major Investment banks. His global experience in senior roles includes stints in London and Hong Kong.
John has specialised in structuring and managing strong performing investment funds that target after tax returns designed for specific outcomes, including low volatility, low drawdown and consistent income to investors. John’s most recent role was with Northward Capital where he was Executive Director/Portfolio Manager for the Northward Equity Income Fund and Ethical Equity Income Fund.
John has an extensive derivative background enabling him to originate and structure new products and ideas to meet individual client needs that are implemented in a robust risk management framework. He has worked across multi asset classes which gives him the capability to offer the right products and solutions to both retail and institutional investors.
Marcus joined Plato in early 2023 as an Associate Analyst, transitioning from a successful internship. With a practical understanding of machine learning and neural networks, Marcus specialises in leveraging Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques and harnessing the capabilities of Large Language Models (LLMs) to develop innovative investment strategies. Marcus is currently pursuing a double degree in Bachelor of Commerce and Honors in Mechatronic Engineering at the University of Sydney.
SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER
Subscribe to keep up to date with the latest fund
information and insights.
“Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws.”
Plato (427-347 BC)
“Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws.”
Plato (427-347 BC)
