Amundi
Amundi has appointed Heinrich Merz as chief investment officer of its alternative investments specialised subsidiary Amundi Alternative Investments (Amundi AI).
Merz was previously co-deputy chief investment officer at Permal Investment Management Services where he was a member of the firm’s investment committee and managed a number of funds, including customised hedge fund portfolios.
Before this, he was a senior hedge fund specialist at Cambridge Associates. From 2005 to 2008, Merz was a trader then analyst in the equity team of Concordia Advisors, a multi-strategy hedge fund, where he started his career.
First Names Group
First Names Group has appointed Eric Fady as chief financial officer. Reporting to group chief executive Cengiz Somay, Fady will assume overall responsibility for delivering the group’s financial support needs.
Fady has over 20 years’ international and corporate finance experience working for public and private equity backed companies, mainly in phases of growth, change, acquisitions and refinancing. After graduating from NEOMA Business School in his native France, Fady began his career as an accountant with KPMG in Lyon.
Before joining First Names Group, he was group chief finance officer of Hyperion Insurance Group, headquartered in London.
Jean Pierre Koolmees has been appointed head of First Names Group’s Asian operations, effective immediately. Holding a seat on the group’s management committee, Koolmees, who will also report to Cengiz Somay, will oversee both First Names Group and its subsidiary fund business Moore Management throughout the Asia-Pacific region.
Based in Singapore, he will be responsible for further developing and implementing the Asia business strategy and growth plans covering important and new investor segments throughout the Group’s offices in Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan.
Legal & General
Group chief financial officer Mark Gregory has informed Legal & General’s board that he intends to retire on 31 January 2017.
Gregory has been with Legal & General for 17 years and for the last seven years he has served as an executive director on the board, initially as chief executive of the Savings business and subsequently as the group chief financial officer. He will remain in his position until his successor is appointed.
PKF Littlejohn
Accountancy firm PKF Littlejohn, the London member firm of PKF International, announced the appointment of three partners and five other professionals from inward investment specialists, Fitzgerald & Law as part of its ongoing growth strategy. The team will join PKF Littlejohn on 8 February 2016.
Dominic Fiore and Keith Steele are outsourcing partners with particular strength in the inward investment market, especially from the USA.
Jonathan Boyfield is a tax partner specialising in expatriate and non-domiciled individual private tax issues. He brings with him a team of five tax professionals.
Fieldfisher
European law firm Fieldfisher has added Azad Ali as a new partner to the firm’s Financial Services Regulatory practice. Ali was most recently counsel in the Financial Institutions Advisory & Financial Regulatory Group at Shearman & Sterling, having been at the firm since 2005.
He specialises in advising clients on UK and EU regulatory matters across a wide range of regulated sectors, working with banks, broker-dealers, infrastructure providers, many buy-side participants and regulated financial businesses generally.
