QBE has appointed a global head of investor relations and communications in a newly created group executive role.

Tony Jackson will join the insurer on January 1, 2012 from Macquarie Equities, where he was most recently an executive director and senior financial analyst.

QBE Group CEO Frank O’Halloran says Mr Jackson “will also support the group executive in business planning, strategy and acquisitions”.

The appointment comes at a time when QBE desperately needs to communicate its story better to investors, with its share price slumping beyond the market’s general downward trend of the past week.

After trading around $16-$17 in recent months, with a high of $19.60 in April, QBE’s share price traded lower for consecutive days last week, closing at a 12-month low of $13.19 last Thursday.

Market concerns over its investment income exposure have been blamed, with QBE understood to earn around three-quarters of its investment income from the US and Europe, primarily from government bonds.

Bond yields have collapsed recently and yields in the US have suffered further following the US Federal Reserve’s announcement that it would keep interest rates near zero for the next two years.

The company’s financial performance and dismal outlook is once again raising the issue of Mr O’Halloran’s continued tenure.

Industry scuttlebutt says the group’s market performance, coupled with the sudden departure last month of Mr O’Halloran’s one-time heir apparent Vince McLenaghan and the rising influence of Global Underwriting Operations CEO John Neal, makes the succession issue “a certainty” for discussion at an investors’ meeting in Sydney on Friday.