Lombard Odier Investment Managers
Asset manager Lombard Odier IM has announced that its global chief investment officer Jan Straatman is to retire at the end of the year, although he will remain as an adviser on the firm’s funds boards.
Straatman, who joined the company in 2012, was responsible for overseeing the company’s range of investment strategies and for developing its multi-boutique structure. Over the course of the year, his responsibilities will be gradually transitioned to the investment officers leading the various boutiques.
J O Hambro Capital Management
Investment firm J O Hambro Capital Management (JOHCM) has bolstered its UK intermediary sales team with the appointments of Helme Harrison and Bryan Horne as sales managers, reporting to the head of UK Intermediary Gavin White.
Harrison joined the firm in June from BNY Mellon and is working with White on coverage of London-based discretionary wealth managers. Horne joined JOHCM from Investec this week and will cover intermediary relationships in Scotland, northern England and Northern Ireland.
Pension Protection Fund
The boss of the UK’s Pension Protection Fund (PPF) has handed in his resignation nearly nine years.
Alan Rubenstein is to quit his role as chief executive of the PPF early next year. His decision to step down will leave the board of the UK’s pensions lifeboat and officials at the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) seeking to identify a new chief in the coming weeks.
Rubenstein joined the PPF in April 2009 as chief executive, following a career in asset management and investment banking, latterly as a managing director with Morgan Stanley and Lehman Brothers.
Saunderson House
Saunderson House’s recently-appointed head of discretionary management service, Leigh Stephens, has left to join Tacit Investment Management as head of strategic relationships.
Stephens only joined the wealth manager in March 2017 from Close Borthers Asset Management, where he was responsible for managing adviser investment relationships.
Architas
Investment company Architas has apointed two new managers and an analyst.
Julie Lamirel has joined the team as a senior investment manager after 11 years at Axa and will be responsible for the Architas portfolios distributed in Belgium, she has also worked at Lehman Brothers and BNP Paribas.
Richard Chiang joins as a quantitative analyst to develop the fund and asset class screening process, he was formerly an analyst at Standard Chartered Bank and worked for Barclays Capital and Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
Alex Burn, an investment analyst at Architas since 2013, has been promoted to investment manager after gaining approval from the FCA and will co-manage a new global equity income fund set to be launched in the coming months as well as the firm’s multi-asset passive range.
GBST
Australian software house GBST has appointed Mark Knowlton as chief technology officer, reporting to executive officer Rob DeDominicis.
Knowlton has more than 20 years’ digital technology leadership experience. He joins the company from Macquarie Bank where he was chief information officer for its banking and financial services division.
GBST provides wealth administration software to the financial services industry through its Composer platform. Listed on the Australian Securities Exchange, it has offices throughout Australia, London, Hong Kong and New York as well as operations in Paris and Singapore.