The latest moves in wealth management across Europe, Middle East and Africa.

Cornerstone Tax
Cornerstone Tax, the property tax consultancy firm consisting of chartered tax advisors, has appointed Gurcharan Kharay as a tax consultant. He will be responsible for running the wealth practice.

Kharay has more than 20 years of experience in law, tax, in-house, financial services, insurance and business development. He previously headed up private wealth and tax departments at several law firms, where he was responsible for tax and private wealth/estate planning.

State Street
State Street Global Advisors, the asset management arm of State Street, has appointed Matteo Andreetto as senior managing director and head of the SPDR exchange-traded fund business for Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Andreetto will be based in London.

Reporting to Rory Tobin, global head of State Street Global Advisors’ SPDR ETF business, Andreetto will be responsible for developing, leading and executing all aspects of SPDR’s ETF business strategy in EMEA. He will lead the ETF sales teams, working with colleagues covering product development, marketing, capital markets and infrastructure to deliver ETF products and services that meet client aspirations.

Andreetto joins from STOXX, part of Deutsche Börse Group, where most recently he was the chief executive and head of index services.  

Also, State Street has appointed Angela Summonte as senior vice president and head of asset owner and official institutions sector solutions for Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA). 

Based in Frankfurt, Summonte will report to Maria Cantillon, head of Sector Solutions for EMEA. The regional asset owner and official institutions sector solutions teams will report to Summonte.

In her new role, Summonte will be responsible for leading the firm’s sales strategy for the asset owner and official institutions sectors across EMEA. She will work closely with the product development team to further enhance State Street’s current product offering across the global exchange, global markets and global services businesses for new and existing clients. 

She joins State Street from BNP Paribas Securities Services in Germany, where she held various sales roles in the banking, global custody, and fund administration sectors over a 14 year period.

Aviva Investors
Aviva Investors, the global asset management business of Aviva, has appointed Susan Schmidt as head of US equities. This appointment follows the arrival in January 2018 of David Cumming as chief investment officer of equities.

Schmidt, who has over 25 years’ experience in the investment industry, will be based in Chicago and reports to Cumming.

Prior to Aviva Investors, she spent three years as a senior portfolio manager covering small- and mid-cap US equities for investment management company Westwood Holdings Group. 

Kleinwort Hambros
Wealth manager Kleinwort Hambros has appointed Matt Falla as head of private banking in Guernsey and deputy head of private banking in the Channel Islands.

Based at Kleinwort Hambros’ office in Guernsey, Falla is responsible for building the business strategy to provide banking and investment solutions for domestic, international clients and financial intermediaries. He joined in March this year and reports into Clive Wright, head of private banking in the Channel Islands.

Falla joined SGPB Hambros in December 2005 as a senior private banker from HSBC International Fund Distribution, where he was regional manager for its Middle East and African intermediary based clients. In 2011, Falla was appointed head of the financial intermediaries team in Jersey, and was promoted to group head in 2015.

Fidelity International
Fidelity International has announced fixed income portfolio manager, Ian Spreadbury, will retire at the end of 2018. Spreadbury joined Fidelity International in 1995. 

Following three years as co-manager, Sajiv Vaid, a fixed income portfolio manager with over 20 years’ experience, will become lead manager on the Fidelity MoneyBuilder Income and Fidelity Extra Income Funds.

Kristian Atkinson will support Vaid as co-manager on the Fidelity MoneyBuilder Income Fund and the Fidelity Short Dated Corporate Bond Fund.  Peter Khan will also support Vaid as co-manager of the Fidelity Extra Income Fund.

Tim Foster and Claudio Ferrarese will assume joint responsibility for the Fidelity Strategic Bond Fund and Fidelity Funds (SICAV) Flexible Bond Fund.

Bitcoin Suisse
Bitcoin Suisse, a Switzerland-based global financial services provider specialising in crypto-assets, has appointed Lothar Cerjak as head of initial coin offerings.

Cerjak will drive the company’s next growth step in ICOs and token generation events (TGE).

He joins Bitcoin Suisse after almost 25 years with Credit Suisse. At Credit Suisse, he was managing sirector and in the course of his career held various positions in Switzerland and Singapore.

ZEDRA Group
ZEDRA Group has promoted Adam Buckholt to the board of ZEDRA Fund Managers. Buckholt has over 15 years' experience in the funds sector.

In this new role, he will be responsible for overseeing and managing the production process for fund accounting, valuations and transfer of agency. Buckholt was previously a director of Mid Europa Fund Management.

To further support our growth, Neil Black has also been appointed as an associate director and head of governance and compliance within the Guernsey funds team.