Hiring Trends: Institutional Sales

Hiring across all areas of Institutional Sales & Client Servicing has been 24% lower in the first four months of 2008 than over the same period in 2007.

Hiring volumes across Institutional Sales fell again in May, down 33% from May 2007, reducing overall completed hires for the first five months of 2008 by 24% on the same period last year – though this is a relatively buoyant picture, when compared with Equity and Fixed Income Investing hires, which are down 46% and 53% respectively.

Hence Institutional Sales is the least effected segment within asset management, with hiring running only slightly down (6%) on hiring figures when compared with, say, 2005. So, all things considered, hiring in this area is holding up well. We therefore expect this area to remain the busiest of the segments that we monitor for the remainder of the year. Given that the first hiring cycle has been relatively robust, the second hiring cycle is also likely to be fairly strong, as people seek to fill gaps opened up by departures announced since March. Our own subjective experience is also that demand is remaining buoyant in terms of the searches we have in progress.

Demand for Institutional Business Developers has been heaviest for Continental European specialists with 57% of all hires covering the Continent. Within those, demand has been heaviest for Central European specialists (by our definition, covering Germany, Switzerland, and France), accounting for 15% of hires, and then the Nordic region is the next busiest, with 10% of hires (13% if you include the people covering Nordics and Benelux together). There has also been an increasing demand for Middle Eastern sales specialists, accounting for 10% of hires. UK hires have been relatively flat, accounting for only 24% of all hires – a relatively small figure given the size of this market.

Demand remained strongest for Salespeople, with 87% of hires focusing on Sales/Business Development and Consultant Rels, and only 13% in Client Servicing and Client Relations. It also seems that hiring has retrenched to business-critical hires, with a notable preponderance of senior hires (47% of hires accounting for heads of teams). This is a fairly common pattern when times get tough; hiring tends to focus on more senior salespeople, as they tend to pay for themselves if they are good, whilst the client service function simply has to make do until there is more budget.

Our prognosis is that hiring in Institutional Sales will continue to hold up better than on the investing side of the fence, not least as there are a number of US asset managers seeking to expand their sales and distribution footprint in the Europe and so competition for seasoned salespeople will continue to be strong.

Key hiring Houses in the year to date have included:

• HSBC Investments, which has hired three people, including David Puddle (from Putnam) as Head of UK Institutional Sales and Munir Dean (from Western Asset) as Head of Middle East Institutional Sales.

• Dexia has also hired three people, including David Kane as Head of Institutional Sales for UK and Ireland.

• 15 other houses have hired two people, and a further 44 houses have hired only one person.

In addition, there has been a raft of recent senior hires, including:

In May:

• Charles Pelham joins European Credit Management as Head of Client Development. European Credit Management is the Fixed Income Specialist owned by Wachovia's Asset Management arm Evergreen Investments. Pelham was formerly Head of Syndicated loans for Europe and Asia Pacific at Bank of America and left in January amid cuts in its European Operations.

• Hendrik von Ripperda has joined Mirae Asset Global Investments as Head of European Institutional Distribution. He was formerly Head of Distribution at London-based Hedge Fund, KI Asset Management.

• Andy Lawley joins Mirae Asset Global Investments as Head of UK Institutional Distribution. He was formerly a Vice-President in the UK Institutional Distribution team at Credit Suisse Asset Management.

• Jean-Luc Paraire has joined Pioneer Investments as Head of Consultants. Based in the Paris office, he is responsible for Consultant Relations and will work closely with the Global Consultant Relations team, reporting to Fabien Madar, General Manager for France. He was formerly Head of Multi-Management at Credit Agricole Asset Management, a unit he established in 2001 and built to 12 investment professionals.

In April:

• Paul Waters joins AIG Global Investment Corp as Head of UK Business Development. Based in London, he will be responsible for developing the company's Institutional business. He was formerly responsible for Client and Consulting Relationships at Morley Fund Management.

• Soeren Rytoft has joined BNP Paribas Asset Management as Head of Institutional Sales, responsible Nordic and UK clients, with additional responsibility for Global Consultants. He was formerly at Payden & Rygel in London and Los Angeles, advising Institutional Clients in Europe and overseeing a number of European strategies for US investors.

• Paul Feeney joins BNY Mellon Asset Management as Head of International Distribution with responsibility for Wholesale Sales and Client Services across Britain, Europe and Latin America. He was formerly Head of Sales at Gartmore Investment Management.

• Paul Broughton has joined Neptune Investment Management as Head of Continental European Sales. Reporting to Sales Director Patrick Burton, he will be responsible for driving sales across key European markets, with a particular focus on banks and wealth managers. He was formerly at Matrix, leaving less than 6 months after joining the group.

In March:

• Steve Coxshall joins Crosby Forsyth as Managing Director and Global Head of Funds of Funds Sales. Crosby Forsyth is a subsidiary of Crosby Capital Partners, which took on funds belonging to Forsyth Partners after it went into administration last September. He was formerly a joint founder of Jersey-based Ivey Cox Consulting.

• Richard Meyrick has joined Real Return Group as Director of Sales, responsible for Sales and Marketing of the Veritas and Real Return funds and services across Europe. He will work alongside John Campbell, Marketing and Sales Director of Veritas Asset Management UK. He joins from JO Hambro Capital Management.

• Karen Page joins VCM Fund Management as Head of Marketing and Investor Relations with overall responsibility for their sales and marketing process. She was formerly a Marketing Manager at New Star Asset Management, with responsibility for their Alternative Investments.

In February:

• Oreste Gallo has joined BGI as Head of Southern European, covering France, Italy, Spain and Portugal. He will divide his time between London and Southern Europe where he will market the entire range of BGI products and services to Institutional investors, and joins from BGI.

• Eric Pinn joins Dexion Capital as Head of Institutional Sales and as a board member. He will lead Dexion's distribution strategy and manage its sales teams, and joins from Olympia Capital Management.

• David Harris has joined IMS as Head of Business Development for Segregated Accounts, focusing on Institutional Investment and Pension Fund markets in both the UK and Continental Europe, joining from RCM Asset Management.

In January:

• David Puddle joins HSBC Investments as Head of Institutional Sales. He reports to Kathleen Currie, Managing Director of Institutional at HSBC Investments in the UK. He was formerly Director of Institutional Clients at Putnam, and left when the firm purged 75 staff in Distribution and support areas last October – though he had worked for HSBC before that, leaving the firm in 1992 to join Putnam.

• Munir Dean has also joined HSBC Investments as Head of Institutional Sales for the Middle East. He was formerly at Western Asset Management, where he was a Sales Specialist and has also worked for the Investment Department at the National Bank of Bahrain.

• Donald Aiken joins Morgan Stanley Investment Management as Managing Director and Head of Distribution for its Liquidity Business in the EMEA region from Scottish Widows Investment Partnership.

• Anthony Stevens has joined Northern Trust as Head of Client Services for EMEA from Rimes Technologies.

• Roger Price-Haworth joins Pioneer Investments in a newly-created role of Global Head of Institutional and Wholesale Business in the UK, and will be based in London. He joins from Insight Investment.

• Nick Robert-Nicoud has joined RMB Asset Management as Head of Business Development, from HSBC Investments, where he was a multi-manager product specialist.

• Hiring Trends: Institutional Sales & Client Servicing
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