Pioneer Investments has boosted its institutional team with the appointment of Griff Williams as Institutional Product Strategist.

In this newly created London-based role, Williams will report to Paul Price, Head of Institutional Business for the International Division. His investment experience will see him engage in a partnership approach, working closely with the consultant community and our own business and investment units to match Pioneer Investments' product offering to institutional client needs. 
 
Williams joins Pioneer joins Railpen Investments where he was Senior Investment Manager, responsible for equity manager selection and portfolio construction. He is a CFA-qualified investment professional. Prior to Railpen, Williams was a Senior Investment Consultant at Lane Clark & Peacock LLP. And previous to that, he was Head of Manager Research at Gissings Consultancy Services Limited in London.

'Griff is a highly skilled investment professional with an in-depth knowledge of the institutional industry,' says Price. 'I am confident that his experience will prove invaluable as part of our team, which is responsible for building meaningful partnerships. We are now at a stage where our efforts to grow our institutional business are coming to fruition, having recently won, amongst others, a EUR 250 million mandate from Ikano Fund Management. We want to build the institutional business much further and I believe Griff's skills and capabilities will play an important role in helping us progress to become a key player in institutional asset management.

'Pioneer Investments has had enormous 3rd party success from its alpha generating products and I believe we can harness those existing capabilities and make them accessible to the institutional marketplace,' he adds. 'For example, we can apply a building block approach using the multiple in-house areas of expertise, coupled with the proven strength of the financial engineering capability, to offer strong structured or tailored products.'