JP Morgan Asset Management’s (JPMAM) has continued poaching talent from its top passive rivals as it seeks to rapidly expand its international ETF business.
The asset manager confirmed on Tuesday it had added another four appointments to its ETF group, including two London-based specialists.
The fund group has already hired over a dozen individuals for its international ETF division in 2018 starting with a trio in January. In June it added six specialists to the team, snagging Andrew Moore from Vanguard Asset Management and picking up hires from Amundi and Invesco Powershares.
London office
Hires Álvaro Quirós and Simone Ishikawa will join the London office as a product specialist and sales strategist respectively.
As part of the international beta product team Quirós will focus on product strategy and the development of ETFs alongside other vehicles. Prior to this role, he was in the ETF product development team at of Deutsche Asset Management’s Xtrackers, where he worked on the idea generation for new launches and the enhancement of the Xtrackers range.
Ishikawa will be responsible for developing distribution plans for the international ETF business to focus and direct sales teams’ efforts and priorities. She joins from JPMorgan’s Corporate & Investment Bank where she was a business manager for UK cross-asset and EMEA equities heads of sales and has also held roles at Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse.
Quirós reports to John Harrington, head of international beta and ETF product, and starts with immediate effect, while Ishikawa reports to head of international ETFs Bryon Lake (pictured).
International hires
Elsewhere, Alfred Le Léon has been appointed head of ETF distribution and will be based in Paris.
Le Léon will be focused on developing key ETF relationships across JPMAM’s client base. He has experience in both ETF product adoption and the overall ETF ecosystem.
Like Quirós, he also joins from Deutsche Bank, where he was responsible for selling the Xtrackers ETF range to asset managers, intermediaries and institutional clients.
He started in the ETF industry as an ETF product specialist at HSBC in London.
Le Léon starts with immediate effect and will be reporting to head of continental Europe ETF distribution Olivier Paquier, who was one of the hires in January.
Sean Cunningham has also been appointed as head of Asia ETFs and will be based in Hong Kong.
In the newly created role, Cunningham will be responsible for driving the growth of the firm’s ETF business across the region.
In developing JPMAM’s overall Asia ETF strategy, he will partner with distribution, client service and investment teams to identify opportunities in the growing ETF product categories in Asia as well as serve existing clients across the firm’s Beta Strategies business.
The role will be effective as of 1 October.
Commenting on the hires, Lake said: “We’re very excited to have Simone, Alfred, Álvaro and Sean on board with us and to leverage their expertise.
“We’ve been busy building out our international ETF platform over the past year, ensuring we have the right people and products in place as we seek to serve clients in key markets. These appointments are very much a reflection and extension of that strategy.”
