CITY MOVES WHO’S SWITCHING JOBS
F&C Commercial Property Trust
The trust has appointed John Stephen, currently an independent non-executive director, as its new chairman, effective from 31 October.
Stephen will replace Peter Niven, pictured, who steps down as chairman after four years and will remain on the board as a non-executive director. Niven is also a director of Resolution, which recently acquired insurer Friends Provident, the majority shareholder in FCPT.
Aviva Investors
The asset management firm has appointed Simon Blundell as a senior portfolio manager in credit.
Blundell will be a part of the management team for active credit funds, initially responsible for a number of corporate bond portfolios.
He joins from Fortis Investments / ABN Amro Asset Management, where he was most recently head of investment grade credit. He has extensive experience of both benchmarked and absolute return funds, having previously run various long/short, carry and mean reverting strategies alongside traditional long-only portfolios.
Bank of America
Michael Hanson has joined Banc of America Securities-Merrill Lynch Research as a senior US economist, based in New York and reporting to head of North America economics Ethan Harris.
Hanson was previously an economist at the Federal Reserve Board of Governors and a senior US economist at Lehman Brothers.
Foreign & Colonial
The investment trust has appointed Simon Fraser as a non-executive director and chairman designate following current chairman Mark Loveday’s decision to retire following the company’s AGM in May next year.
Fraser is a former veteran of Fidelity International, where he was chief investment officer between 1995 and 2005, president of the firm’s European and UK institutional business and latterly president of the investment solutions group.
He is also currently a non-executive director at Barclays, Merchants Trust, Fidelity European Values and Fidelity Japanese Values.
Barclays Wealth
The global wealth management firm has appointed Kevin Gardiner as a managing director and head of investment strategy for the EMEA region.
Gardiner joins from HSBC, where he was chief global equity strategist, and has also worked at the Bank of England, Credit Suisse, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley and SG Warburg.
In his new role, he will be responsible for Barclays Wealth’s investment strategy recommendations worldwide and will lead that effort in Europe. He will report to global head of investment strategy Aaron Gurwitz and global head of research strategy and quantitative analytics Arnaud de Servigny.