Northern Trust has announced that it has appointed Wim van Ooijen as Country Head Northern Trust The Netherlands, succeeding Eric Pouwels, who has been named Director of Strategic Development for Europe, Middle East and Africa.

In his role as Country Head, Van Ooijen is responsible for all asset servicing business development, sales and client activities across The Netherlands and will also serve as the primary contact for the regulators. Van Ooijen, who joined Northern Trust in 2004, was previously head of Northern Trust’s Dutch relationship management team.

“The Netherlands continues to be a key market for Northern Trust and one in which we have been increasingly successful as a corporation for many years,” said Penelope Biggs Head of Northern Trust’s Institutional Investor Group, EMEA. “Wim has a wealth of experience in supporting the sophisticated needs of our business in the region and we are delighted to promote him to lead our Dutch operations as we drive future growth.”

Pouwels who joined Northern Trust in 2005 as Head of Asset Servicing Business Development for The Netherlands will now focus on Northern Trust’s business strategy for growth across EMEA.

“We are seeing an increasing demand from institutional investors and asset managers for solutions that can support their diverse and changing requirements, not least those driven by impending regulations such as UCITS and the AIFM directive,” said Biggs. “Eric’s role is to focus on expanding our end-to-end asset servicing and asset management solutions to support these clients, as we build our business across the EMEA region.”