GAM has appointed Paul Udall as an Investment Director. He joins GAM’s London office to manage an UCITS III equity mandate which will invest in environmental and sustainable investment themes, and which is expected to launch later this year. The fund will focus on investment opportunities that are being generated by the transformative change in how energy, resources and materials are developed, delivered and consumed. Udall was previously at Climate Change Capital where he was Managing Director and Portfolio Manager of the global environmental opportunities long/short fund. Prior to that he was a hedge fund manager for Tudor Investments in Greenwich, Connecticut, where he managed systematic market neutral strategies, and Morley Fund Management.
Bluecrest Capital Management has hired three new credit traders for its Multi-Strategy Credit Fund. Dario Villani, Kharen Musaelian and Stephen Waugh will be based in New York and report to Farid Amellal and Andrew Silver who head up the team. The fund is engaged in opportunities across the full credit spectrum with a bias towards relative value. The fund focuses on fundamental, relative value and convexity trading. Villani joins from Deutsche Bank where he was Managing Director in Global Credit Trading; Musaelian joins from UBS where he worked as a Managing Director in the repositioning group for the firm; and Stephen Waugh joins from Deutsche Bank where he was a Director managing the high-yield and leveraged loan index tranche trading business.
Butterfield Fulcrum has appointed Brian Young to its New York Business Development team. He will be working with Andrew Smith, Head of Global Business Development and will have specific responsibility for promoting Altinus among allocators. Altinus is an administrator sponsored managed accounts platform, providing segregated and comingled managed accounts with a common set of tools for operations, administration and risk monitoring. Young joins from BNP Paribas where he held various positions within the Equity & Commodity Derivatives Group.
Castle Hill Asset Management has appointed Tom O’Shea a Partner of the firm. O’Shea will be based in Castle Hill’s Charlottesville, Virginia office. Prior to joining the firm, O’Shea was a Partner at GoldenTree Asset Management, based in London.
Citi Capital Advisors has named Mahmood Noorani as a portfolio manager in its Global Macro Strategies team, which provides the investment management services for the CCA Global Macro Fund Ltd. Noorani brings 20 years of experience to the team, including five years at BlueCrest Capital Management. Prior to BlueCrest he was a Proprietary Trader at Credit Suisse in London and an options market maker at UBS.
RWC Partners has confirmed that Schroders’ fund managers Nick Purves and Ian Lance will join the company in August. The pair formerly managed the Schroder UK Equity Income Fund and a number of institutional mandates. They will manage both Value and Income funds in their new roles. Purves has been a long-standing fund manager at Schroders having been at the company for 16 years. Lance joined Schroders in 2007 to work alongside Purves and had previously worked as Head of Global Equity Research at Gartmore and as Head of European Equities at Citigroup.
IMC asset management has announced the hiring of a team of four senior investment professionals. The move heralds the launch of an investment grade credit corporate long/short and long-only capability within its core European credit capability. The team joins from Lombard Odier Darier Hentsch. Rodrigo Araya joins as Head of Investment Grade Credit Strategies. The other team members joining are Oscar Jansen who joins as Senior Portfolio Manager, Robert Manning who joins as Head of Investment Grade Credit analysis and Henk Wiersma who joins as Senior Investment Grade Credit Analyst.
Matrix Group has appointed Tiraneh Tehranchian as Head of Risk. She joins from Man Global Strategies, Man Investments where she was Head of Risk for nearly 5 years. Prior to that Tehranchian was risk manager at Abbey National Treasury Services, having started her career at JP Morgan. “Tiraneh’s experience in compliance, risk and performance attribution will be vital to developing our product offering,” said Matrix CEO Chris Merry.
Tullett Prebon has hired Gahtan Vahidy to drive its origination efforts in the launch of a primary placement business for alternatives to raise capital for hedge funds, private equity and other alternative investment funds. Vahidy will work with the Alternative Investment team headed by Neil Campbell. They previously worked together at the Axiom Alternative Fund.
Mercer has appointed Jelle Beenen as Head of its Investment Consulting business in the Benelux markets. He has led Mercer’s Financial Strategy Group in the Netherlands since joining the firm in early 2008. He also serves on the Alternatives Investment Committee for Mercer’s European Implemented Consulting service. Before joining Mercer, Beenen held senior positions at PGGM Investments as Head of Alternative Beta and Head of Commodities & Quantitative Strategies and was a Senior Derivatives Researcher at both ABN AMRO Bank and Rabobank International.
Optima Fund Management has appointed Rachel S.L. Minard as Partner and Managing Director. Minard will be responsible for expanding the firm’s global institutional relationships across all distribution channels and will report directly to the CEO and Founder of Optima, Dixon Boardman. She will sit on the firm’s management and investment committees and will open and oversee the firm’s San Francisco office.
Prime Fund Solutions has made several new hires across its global network of offices. New members of the team include: Jay Moghe, Martin Lui, Jason Ganz and Stephen Kane. Moghe joins PFS’ Singapore office as Deputy Managing Director in charge of Sales and Relationship Management. Lui has taken on the role of Director of Client Services and Operations in Singapore. Ganz has been appointed Vice President of Sales and Relationship Management in the New York office, while Kane will be managing the continuing development of middle office services for PFS’ single manager hedge fund clients.
Liontrust Asset Management has appointed John Ions, formerly head of retail, as Chief Executive after Nigel Legge stood down from the post with immediate effect, while remaining as a consultant until 6 August 6. 010. Adrian Collins, currently Non-Executive Chairman, will become Executive Chairman. “In John Ions, who joined Liontrust earlier this year, we have an individual with a wealth of industry experience to lead the company and build on its strong financial position, pool of talented fund managers and range of funds to create value for investors and shareholders,” said Collins. “Having co-founded the company in 1994, Nigel has been the driving force behind the development of Liontrust, including its flotation in 1999, and has steered the business through an extremely challenging period over the past 18 months.”
