Rice Capital Management Plus Inc. announced Wednesday that it has appointed former Altamira chief, Philip Armstrong, as its president and CEO.

The board of Winnipeg-based Rice Capital has also appointed Mal Anderson as COO, Mark Arthur as executive vice-president, Jason Mackey as CFO, and a general counsel and secretary, Duriya Patel.

“Our goal is to ensure that the company is strong, profitable and the client’s interest always comes first. If we do a good job of running the company, the stock price will take care of itself,” said Armstrong in a statement.

Armstrong was an original partner of Altamira Investment Service Inc. and acted as the company’s CEO and director. After a short retirement, he became a founding principal of Jovian Capital Corp. in 2001. Jovian merged with Rice, the firm founded by Tom Rice, earlier this spring.

Rice has a distribution network of 270 licensed financial planners, $3.5 billion in assets under administration, as well as its employee benefits, life insurance and life, health and pension businesses.

Jovian brings wealth management and asset management groups. The merger was structured as a share exchange. The shareholders of Jovian have received common shares in the capital of Rice which represent 50% of the post-merger outstanding common shares.

Anderson is president and CEO of Rice Financial Group Inc. and Independent Wealth Management Inc.

Arthur recently joined Jovian as executive vice president. From 1989 to 2000 Arthur was the president and chief investment officer for Royal Bank Investment Management Inc. And, until 2002, Arthur was president, CIO and director of RBC Global Investment Management Inc., vice-president of investments and director of Royal Mutual Funds, and chairman of RBC investments global investment strategy committee. Mackey was a senior manager in KPMG’s investment dealer practice. He joined McFarlane Gordon, a subsidiary of Jovian in March, 2000, as CFO and COO. Patel joined Jovian Capital in 2002 and provides legal advice to Jovian and its subsidiaries.