Gottex Fund Management Holdings, an independent fund of hedge funds management group, has announced the appointment of William J. Landes as a senior managing director and a member of the executive management and asset allocation committees.

Based in Boston, Landes will play an active role in investments, marketing and business development with particular focus on asset and strategy allocation and North American distribution.

Landes joins Gottex from 2100 Capital, a diversified alternative investment firm, where he was chief executive. He was previously a managing director at Putnam Investments and headed the firm's alternative assets initiative.

While at Putnam, he was also head of the global investment research team, the global asset allocation and currency team and US fixed-income mutual fund portfolios. Before joining Putnam in 1985 he was director of fixed income at Loewi Asset Management.

'Hiring professionals of the highest calibre is vital to our continued success,' says Gottex chairman and chief executive Joachim Gottschalk. 'With his 25 years of finance and investment experience, Bill will augment a team that is already considered one of the strongest in the industry.'

Incorporated in Guernsey, Gottex is the holding company of an alternative investment management group whose core business is providing investment management to a diversified range of funds of hedge funds.

The Gottex Group provides portfolio selection and asset allocation advice as well as risk management and investment monitoring services to a broad and diversified institutional client base, and structures and manages specialised fund of hedge funds managed accounts and provides related investment advisory services.

With offices in Lausanne, London, Hong Kong, New York, Boston and Luxembourg and associated offices in Sydney and Montevideo, the Gottex Group advises funds that invest with more than 165 hedge fund managers worldwide on behalf of predominantly institutional investors. At the end of last year, Gottex had USD16bn of assets under management.