Olson joins from Nomura, where he was managing director and head of the EMEA teams responsible for the sales of asset backed securities and the distribution of illiquid debt instruments.
Prior to that he worked at Standard Chartered Bank and spent nine years at Lehman Brothers in London and New York.
iShares said Olson’s role will be to co-ordinate iShares’ fixed income initiatives and activities across its product development, sales and capital markets teams and ensure a greater range of bond exposures are available through ETFs.
He will report to Tom Fekete, iShares’ new head of product development EMEA, and David Heike, global head of fixed income at the firm.
Joe Linhares, head of iShares in EMEA, said: “Fixed income ETFs have gathered strong assets over the past three years, but we’re now seeing a revolution in demand and in how they are being used.
“A seismic shift is taking place. Institutional investors such as insurance companies are looking to hold more bond ETFs and fewer individual fixed income securities and at the same time retail investors are learning more about these funds and their benefits, which is further fuelling uptake.”