Jobs roundup: Fund managers hire

With bonuses payments around the corner and holidays approaching, recruitment is supposed to be in hibernation. But fund managers and private equity firms are keeping the ball rolling.

Scottish Widows Investment Partnership (SWIP), Old Mutual Asset Managers and Gartmore all hired last week.

SWIP recruited Nigel Bolton, head of European investment at WP Stewart, as head of European equities to start in January. Old Mutual appointed a head of marketing and a fund manager for its quantitative equities team, while Gartmore appointed a senior portfolio manager to its US equities business.

Meanwhile the extent of the pain at the beleaguered firm Edinburgh Fund Managers (EFM), became clearer. About 40% of its staff have been made redundant since it was taken over by Aberdeen Asset Management in October.

Last week the identities of nine staff who have left EFM (not all of them necessarily through redundancy) became public. They included its former head of European equities, its former head of US equities, and the former head of its Japan team.

One of EFM's remaining 46 staff was poached by Watson Wyatt, the investment consultant. Ian Beattie, an actuary, left EFM to become a senior consultant on Watson Wyatt's investment strategy team.

Private equity hiring focused on promising Continental European markets. SG Capital Europe, the private equity branch of Société Générale, hired three associates in its Paris office.

VCM Venture Capital Management, Germany's oldest private equity fund of funds manager, made four senior hires, and appointed new heads of private equity, business development, and US venture funds.

A few investment banks broke the seasonal torpor and announced the recruitment of new staff. Unsurprisingly, many came from outside the industry or were not currently working. This meant hiring banks did not need to compensate them for the loss of soon-to-be-paid bonuses at previous employers.

Morgan Stanley hired Jeremy Heywood, principal private secretary to Tony Blair, the UK prime minister, as a managing director in its mergers and acquisitions division.

Lazard said it was in final negotiations to recruit Will Samuel, a senior figure in UK corporate finance, who retired as vice chairman of European investment banking at Citigroup in October

Some banks hired people still in the market. SG strengthened its debt origination team by hiring from French rival CDC-Ixis Capital Markets to cover the Benelux and Nordic regions. Arbuthnot Securities, the small and mid-cap boutique, hired James Steel, a managing director at Citigroup, to head its corporate finance division..

Arbuthnot, together with other corporate finance employers, may be in the market for additional staff next year. In July Stephen Lockley, its chief executive, said the firm wanted to expand while there were good quality people on the market.