Indian Ocean doubles staff, poaches five from Tolhurst Noall

Indian Ocean Capital has nearly doubled staff numbers after five senior stockbrokers from Perth's Tolhurst Noall office quit their jobs to take up positions at the recently formed corporate advisory group.

Michael Carter, Joe Saunders, Frank Scullino, Adam Toute and Graeme Clatworthy left Tolhurst Noall's St George's Terrace office on Friday and turned up to work for their former boss, Andrew Wilson, at Indian Ocean's digs at the Perth Exhibition and Convention Centre.

Mr Wilson left his job as Tolhurst's state manager to set up Indian Ocean with former Patersons brokers Gary Castledine and Christopher Wells.

The trio have been hard at work setting up corporate deals for the past two months and will now ramp up its stockbroking arm after gaining a retail broking licence last week.

Mr Castledine said he intended to appoint more stockbrokers in the coming months.

"We will expand the business but we will keep it boutique," he said "We would like to pick up a few more people. We have 11 now but want to have about 15 or 16."

Mr Castledine said Indian Ocean would remain a boutique firm.

"People are looking for guys that are hands on," he said.

The firm's first corporate deal was the $7.5 million initial public offering for Charles Mosert's South-African producer, Nare Diamonds. Indian Ocean closed the prospectus with $2 million in oversubscriptions. Nare is due to list on the Australian Stock Exchange tomorrow.

Indian Ocean is currently raising $5 million for Bowen Energy.