Guardian Wealth
Roy Walker, who was named 2018 best financial planner in Singapore by the Financial Planning Association, is joining Guardian Wealth Management (GWM) in Dubai.
Walker joins Guardian from Nexus Singapore, which announced in March it would be departing the south-east Asian nation to focus on its core Middle East operations.
Walker said: “Choosing the right company to work with is not straightforward. The international advisory industry faces many challenges, and only firms with the management vision and resolve to prepare for change will be successful.
“GWM is FCA regulated in the UK, and I have been struck by the quality of people throughout the organisation. I’m looking forward to being part of GWM’s growth in the region.”
Mark Mobius
Emerging markets guru Mark Mobius has nabbed former Franklin Templeton colleagues Carlos Hardenberg and Greg Konieczny to help launch his asset management boutique.
The pair are due to be unveiled as partners at a launch party in London next week, Financial News has reported.
Mobius left Franklin Templeton in January to launch his own firm.
Less than a month later, Hardenberg also resigned from the US-based asset manager, quitting his position as lead manager on the Templeton Emerging Markets Investment Trust (Temit) fund, throwing carefully planned succession into disarray.
In February, Mobius revealed that he was applying for fund management licences in London and Luxembourg to launch an open-ended, long-only emerging and frontier markets fund.
The fund is set to take an environmental, social and governance approach to investing.
Axa Investment Management
Axa IM’s veteran fund manager Nigel Thomas is set to retire in March 2019 after 40 years in asset management and 16 years at the firm.
Thomas, manager of the Axa Framlington UK Select Opportunities fund, will be handing over the reins to Chris St John, manager of the firm’s UK-mid cap fund.
Since inception in 2002, Thomas has returned 380% to investors and 10.6% on an annualised basis, versus the FTSE All Share’s 237% and 8.1%, respectively.
In 2013, he was awarded the ‘outstanding fund manager award’ from Morningstar OBSR.
Artemis Investment Management
Artemis has announced two non-executives will be joining the firm’s management committee.
Alan Brown, who has more than 40 years’ experience of fund management, will chair the management committee.
Brown started as an analyst at Morgan Grenfell in 1974 and ended as a group chief investment officer at Schroders from 2005 – 2012.
Since his retirement from Schroders, Brown has become a governor of the Wellcome Trust and chairs its investment committee.
Among other roles, he is chairman of CDP, a UK-based environmental disclosure organisation, and is a non-executive director of Pool Reinsurance Company.
In addition to joining the management committee Nicky McCabe, who has more than 20 years’ industry experience, will chair Atremis’ Compliance and Risk Committee.
After an early career at McKinsey, McCabe moved into asset management, first at HSBC and then at Fidelity, where she spent 20 years in operational leadership and board roles.
Following her retirement from Fidelity in 2017, McCabe has become a member of the board of trustees of the University of Bristol; and is also on the board of Vitality Life and Aberdeen Asian Income Investment Trust.
Deutsche Bank
Deutsche Bank’s management board has appointed Frank Kuhnke as chief operating officer (COO).
He will be responsible for technology and central operations, including information security, data management, digital transformation and corporate services.
Kuhnke succeeds Kim Hammonds who will leave the bank after this year’s AGM.
Additionally, the management board appointed Kuhnke as a senior group director.
Kuhnke will report into Christian Sewing, Deutsche Bank’s chief executive officer, and will regularly attend the meetings of the management board.
He joined Deutsche Bank in 1986 and, since January 2016, has been divisional control officer, chief administrative officer and head of operations of the Private & Commercial Bank. During his career he has worked across several business divisions and infrastructure functions in Tokyo, London, New York and Germany.
WisdomTree
WisdomTree, an exchange-traded fund (ETF) and exchange-traded product (ETP) sponsor, has appointed Christopher Gannatti as head of research for Wisdom Tree in Europe.
In this role, Gannatti will be responsible for clients receiving up-to-date, expert insight into global macroeconomic and asset class specific developments, and will also support the Ucits platform globally.
He will work closely with WisdomTree investors to educate on equity markets, commodities, foreign exchange, fixed income and ETPs generally.
Gannatti moves from WisdomTree’s headquarters in New York where he has worked since December 2010, initially as a research analyst, before being promoted to associate director in 2014.
