The moves of the week!

Petercam strenghtens its equities fund management team oriented to income strategies

Petercam Institutional Asset Management hired Kris Hermie who will join its equities fund management team oriented to income strategies.

Hermie will first assist Olivier Hertoghe as co-manager of the Petercam Equities Europe Dividend fund. He will be in charge of development of future strategies for the management firm based on income equities

Between January 2007 and December 2010, Hermie worked for the “Value – Dividend equity” team at ING Investment Management (IIM). Prior to joining IIM, kris managed value portfolios at Dexia Asset Management for pension funds and insurance companies. He started his carreer at Banque Corluy as analyst and fund manager.

Aviva Investors makes key hire in Sweden with appointment of Tove Bångstad

Aviva Investors announced the appointment of Tove Bångstad as Business Development Director – Sweden. Tove Bångstad will be responsible for growing Aviva Investors business and client relationships in the Nordic market.

Starting on 1st February 2011, she will report to Véronique Cherret, Director - Head of Institutional Channel - UK & Europe.

Prior to joining Aviva Investors, Tove was at SEB Wealth Management where she was most recently Head of Institutional Clients for Sweden as well as head of Mutual Funds. In this role she was responsible for all sales in Sweden, institutional as well as third party distribution channels, managing a number of external partnerships and working closely with clients.

Ted Potter, Managing Director - Business Development Europe, commented:

“Sweden has one of the best regarded pensions systems in the world and is a core market for Aviva Investors, particularly given our longstanding experience in working with pension funds and more recently, on the potential implications of Solvency II.

“We look forward to deepening our relationships in both the institutional and financial institutions space following the appointment of Tove, who has great experience in the Swedish market and a strong track record in building external business as well as experience as being a client on the institutional side.”

Sonal Desai, PhD, has been appointed as back up manager of Michael Hasenstab for 3 funds of Franklin Templeton Fixed Income Group

She will assist Michael Hasenstab, who will remain the lead manager, in managing the following funds
 Templeton Global Bond Fund
 Templeton Global Bond (Euro) Fund
 Templeton Global Total Return Fund

Sonal Desai, PhD, joined the firm in october 2009 as director of research for the Franklin Templeton Fixed Income Group’s international bond department, in charge of providing the fixed income research team with macroeconomic analysis.

Prior to joining Franklin Templeton, Sonal Desai worked for over six years at the International Monetary Fund, where she was involved in the negotiation and monitoring of fund programmes in several emerging market countries, and 5 years as Director and Senior Economist for Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein in London.

Sonal holds a PhD in economics from Northwestern University, and earned a BA with honours from Delhi University in New Delhi.