Russell Investments has hired Ken O'Keeffe as an additional dedicated resource to support the firm's index-licensing business for ETFs. O'Keeffe formerly worked for MSCI Barra, where he most recently served as global head of client service. He is based in Russell's office in New York City.

In addition, Jamie Forbes has been promoted to serve as regional director for ETFs for the Europe, Middle East and Africa region. Based in London, she oversees a dedicated program focused especially on European markets, where Russell's ETF licensing business already features five listed products.

In his role as regional director for exchange traded funds based on Russell Indexes, O'Keeffe oversees licensing and future development of new and additional products for ETF providers in the Americas who aim to leverage Russell's objective methodology and comprehensive index design.

"Russell's index business is committed to innovation in the investable product space," said Rolf Agather, head of index research and innovation at Russell Investments. "The licensing of Russell Indexes for a wide range of passive ETF products is a rapidly growing part of our business, and we're very pleased to have more talent pushing a stream of new products through the pipeline in conjunction with existing and new partners. That pipeline includes single factor products and global index products as well as alternative or non-market capitalization weighted index products."

"Our index methodology and construction rules allow ETF providers to build products with comprehensive and truly accurate exposure to any segment of the market globally," Agather said. "We expect the addition of new key positions dedicated to future development of our licensing business will lead to more innovative ETF products based on our indexes."