People moves

Knight Libertas, a subsidiary of Knight Capital Group, has appointed Les Levi as managing director, head of corporate finance. He has over 25 years experience in the global capital markets as a portfolio manager, research analyst and investment banker. Levi joins from Plainfield Asset Management, a special situations hedge fund, where he was a partner. Previously, he held senior-level research and investment banking positions at JP Morgan, Merrill Lynch and Drexel Burnham Lambert.

Mourant International Finance Administration has appointed Matthew Wood as managing director of its Guernsey office. He joined the Guernsey office in 2004 as head of accounting. His time at Mourant also included time at its London office with responsibility for European private equity business development and in Dubai where he oversaw business development in the Gulf region. Wood will now assume responsibility for managing the growth plans of the Guernsey office as well as overseeing client service teams.

Northern Trust has hired John Read as global head of derivatives product management. In his new role based in London, Read will be responsible for setting the overall direction and strategy for derivatives product development and enhancing Northern Trust's derivatives processing capabilities. He joins from JPMorgan Chase where he led the development of the over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives products as derivatives product manager for hedge fund services.

Credit Suisse has appointed Benjamin Happ as head of capital services Asia Pacific. In this position he will lead efforts to connect the bank's Asian hedge fund client base with global investors and to introduce non-Asian hedge funds to local investors with increasingly broad investment remits. Happ joins in Hong Kong as a director and will report regionally to Kevin Meehan, head of prime services coverage Asia Pacific, and functionally to Edgar Senior, global head of capital services. He comes from Abax Global Capital, a Hong Kong-based alternative investment manager where he was head of business development.

Conyers Dill & Pearman has announced the addition of Devalingum Gopalla as associate based in its London office. He specialises in hedge funds with a focus on inward and outward investment across India, China and Africa. He also has expertise in Mauritian compliance matters, non-contentious regulatory issues and securities law. Prior to joining he practised as a barrister at a specialist Mauritian law firm. He has also worked at the Mauritius Financial Services Commission on regulatory law and enforcement and as sole in-house counsel to one of the largest Indian private equity groups based in Mauritius.

Baronsmead Partners, a specialist insurance broker to the alternative investment sector, has appointed Shyam Moorjani as partner and chief operating officer. Moorjani will responsible for all client servicing, business development and building up of markets in the Channel Islands, Luxembourg and Switzerland. Previously he held a number of senior positions including director and COO of the hedge fund of funds business at Stenham, head of client services at Key Asset Management and head of institutional client reporting at JP Morgan Fleming Asset Management.

Collins Stewart has appointed Jerry Levy as senior managing director and will be regional head of fixed income. Levy will lead and develop Collins Stewart's fixed income business in the US based in New York. Previously Levy was director of SAC Capital's Sigma Fixed Income Fund.
The company has also appointed Bryan Maher as managing director to develop and head a lodging, gaming, leisure and REITS research team for the US business. This newly added sector will be based in the New York office. The introduction of a this sector in the US follows Collins Stewart's recent additions of a US banks research team in June and a US and Canadian oil and gas analyst in May. Maher was previously a director at RBC Capital Markets in New York.

Liontrust Asset Management has announced that Ross Hollyman's team of three investment managers (Nikki Martin, Rob Cornish and Tom Ayres) will join the company from GAM in October 2009. This follows an announcement on June 22 that Hollyman will move from GAM to Liontrust in January 2010. On joining Liontrust, Hollyman and his team will develop the global value, global earnings surprise and global multi-factor equity investment process.
Martin will focus primarily on the global earnings Surprise investment process at Liontrust. At GAM, Martin undertook qualitative and quantitative analysis on UK and pan European equity long short and long only funds.
Cornish will concentrate primarily on the global value investment process. Before joining GAM in January 2004, Cornish was a consultant at FactSet. Ayres will focus primarily on the global multi factor investment process. At GAM his roles since joining the company in 2005 have included fundamental and qualitative analysis and developing quantitative models and analytical tools.
Ayres also previously worked for Anglo Chinese Corporate Finance and Lehman Brothers. Hollyman is an investment director at GAM, where he is responsible for UK and European equity long only and long/short portfolios. He manages the GAM Star UK Dynamic Equity, GAM UK Equity Hedge, GAM European Systematic Value and Income, GAM Star Absolute Euro Systematic and GAM Star European Systematic Value funds.

Conduit Capital Markets, an independent mid-market institutional derivatives and securities dealer, has appointed Paul Blake as head of fixed income sales. Prior to his appointment he was head of institutional bond sales, Europe and Asia at CIBC World Markets in London.

100 Women in Hedge Funds has announced that Kathryn Hall, CEO and chief investment officer of Hall Capital Partners, based in San Francisco, will be awarded the 100 Women in Hedge Funds 2009 Industry Leadership Award at its New York Gala on November 18, 2009. As CEO and CIO of a company managing over $17 billion in assets, Hall's professional success and legacy are widely recognised and include serving as a general partner of HFS Management Partners (predecessor to Farallon Capital Partners) and an early advisor to hedge fund investors. Hall founded the company as Laurel Management Company in 1994. Previously she was a general partner of Laurel Arbitrage Partners, a risk arbitrage investment partnership she founded in 1989.

First State Investments has appointed global investment executive Gary Withers to the role of regional managing director Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA). He joins from Credit Suisse where he held the position of head of global investors, running the global investors business through to its sale to Aberdeen Asset Management and was previously head of asset management, EMEA.

The UK Financial Services Authority (FSA) has appointed Gareth Adams as a senior advisor. He will start on August 3 and will advise on the asset management sector, an area in which he has extensive experience. Until recently Adams was the executive director for regulatory strategy at Fidelity International, having started as European director of compliance in June 1996.

House Republican Leader John Boehner (Ohio) and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Kentucky) has announced that American Enterprise Institute (AEI) scholars Bill Thomas and Peter Wallison have been appointed to the 10-member Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, established by Congress to investigate the causes of the financial crisis and the collapse of major financial institutions. The commission is composed of six Democrats and four Republicans. Members are required to issue a final report by December 15, 2010. Thomas, a visiting fellow at AEI who served as chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee until 2007, will be vice chairman of the commission. Wallison is the AEI Arthur F. Burns Fellow in financial policy studies and a co-director of AEI's programme on financial policy studies. Other commission members include the chairman, Phil Angelides, and members Brooksley Born, Bob Graham, Byron Georgiou, Keith Hennessey, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, Heather Murren and John Thompson.

Legal & General Investment Management has appointed James Finch as head of financial institutions. Hewill have responsibility for the sale and distribution of LGIM's investment capabilities to financial institutions in the UK and overseas.

Effective August 1, 2009, derivatives specialist André Buck will round out the management team of Scoach Switzerland. Previously he was executive director at Bank Vontobel and was in charge of the bank's financial products consulting and distribution activities in the German-speaking region of Switzerland.