European jobs roundup: Fund managers hire; ING changes focus
Fund managers, private banks and hedge funds were in hiring mode in the past week. Bankers at ING, the Dutch-based investment bank, had reason to be apprehensive.
JO Hambro Capital Management, the UK private client investment manager, poached Clive Beagles to fun a new income fund. Beagles joined from Newton Investment Management, where he ran the 1.5bn (€2.2bn) higher income fund. He will launch the new JO Hambro fund in the autumn.
Simon Roberts, a star fund manager and head of UK equities at Lazard Asset Management, left to join the hedge fund Blue Crest. The move came after Lazard lost several senior hedge fund managers, including William Von Mueffling, last year.
Gartmore hired Francisco Gimeno as sales director for Iberia, based in Madrid. Gimeno joined from Crédit Agricole Indosuez, where he was a relationship manager in private banking..
Deutsche Bank recruited for its private wealth management division. Martin Keller, head of prime brokerage at Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, joined as global head of hedge fund investments.
Watson Wyatt, the pension consultant, appointed Jens Witt to run the Munich office it established last year. Witt joins from Aon Jauch and Hübener Consulting, where he was a senior manager.
There were also some high profile departures, both in fund management and investment banking. Niklas Ekvall, chairman and chief executive of A-P Fonden 3, a Swedish pension fund, resigned less than two months after Tomas Nicolin, the chief executive, also quit. Evkall will head asset management at Carnegie Asset Management.
ABN Amro lost a senior M&A banker in France with the departure of Franck Ceddaha, a managing director in M&A. A source close to him said he was evaluating his options.
Steve Seltzer, head of European high yield capital markets at CSFB, left to join Morgan Stanley in New York as global head of high yield. Seltzer had been in London since 2002.
Ravi Joseph, who quit Morgan Stanley as head of European structured products last month, reappeared at Goldman Sachs. He joins as a managing director in the joint fixed income and equity financing team.
ING's bankers were given reason to worry about their future. The Dutch based investment bank indicated it was planning to cut its investment banking operations outside Belgium and the Netherlands.
The bank said it planned to focus on high valued added products like equity and credit derivatives, high yield and M&A advisory. In the process, it will cut the number of products it offers and reduce client coverage. In 2003 ING closed four Asian offices and five south American offices, and slashed 260 jobs in Germany.
ING Barings sold its US investment banking operations to ABN Amro in 2001.
