Ex-DWS man and well-known City trader Juan Landazabal (pictured) has landed at Gam Investments as the firm’s global head of trading.
The Swiss manager said the newly-created role will strengthen its existing trading infrastructure, strategy and processes and improve counterparty relationships across equities, fixed income and FX.
Gam’s reputation has taken a hit in recent months following the suspension of one of its biggest stars Tim Haywood and the subsequent liquidation of his absolute return bond fund (ARBF) range.
While the firm quoted assets under management of CHF163.8bn (£129bn) at the end of June, this figure will have been affected by the wind-up of the ARBF range and outflows from other products. Data from Bloomberg shows that investors have pulled $2.3bn from other Gam funds in the two-and-a-half weeks since Haywood was suspended.
Landazabal has worked in various analyst and trading jobs across Madrid, New York and London during his 24-year career.
Most recently he was global head of fixed income and FX trading for DWS formerly Deutsche Asset & Wealth Management.
Landazabal left Deutsche’s €679bn (£607bn) investment arm in June after five years at the firm and weeks after the group lost its head of global equity trading, Mike Bellaro.
Before DWS he worked at Fidelity Investments for 10 years, first as a senior credit trader and eventually becoming head of fixed income trading.
Matthew Beesley, head of investments at Gam, said Landazabal’s appointment is an important step in Gam’s multi-year change programme, which involves simplifying its systems and moving to a cloud-based IT infrastructure.
Landazabal reports to Beesley who is also based in London.
“His extensive expertise and knowledge of capital markets will be of considerable value as we invest to build a more efficient, robust and scalable operating platform that is aligned with our growth ambitions,” Beesley said.
“Juan’s appointment reflects our commitment to evolving our execution platform accordingly, and our aim to deliver excellent investment outcomes for all of our clients.”
