Optimal Investment Services, a Geneva-based fund of hedge funds manager belonging to the Santander group, has announced the strengthening of its risk team with hires in the UK and Switzerl
Optimal Investment Services, a Geneva-based fund of hedge funds manager belonging to the Santander group, has announced the strengthening of its risk team with hires in the UK and Switzerland and the appointment of Gilles Prince as chief risk officer.
Optimal manages 15 funds of funds and includes an advisory and portfolio services team that structures fund of funds portfolios and provides investment advisory services. The business has more than USD10bn in assets under management and investments with more than 200 hedge fund managers.
Based in Geneva, Prince will head Optimal’s quantitative research, investment risk and operational due diligence teams, and will also chair the risk committee that oversees and pre-approves all potential hedge fund investments.
Prince joined Optimal last October from Lombard Odier Darier Hentsch, where he was also responsible for developing risk management for alternative investments. Previously, he was a senior financial engineer at RMF, a consultant in financial risk management at PricewaterhouseCoopers and worked in structured products at UBS.
Kearstin Meadows, who will report to Prince, has joined Optimal in London as an operational risk lawyer responsible for performing non-investment due diligence on current and new hedge fund investments. A dual qualified lawyer in the US (California) and the UK, she joined from the corporate securities group at Linklaters in London and her experience includes international securities, corporate law and litigation.
Pierre Basecqz has joined the firm in Geneva as an investment risk manager, responsible for performing investment risk analysis on external managers and monitoring the risk exposures of Optimal funds of funds. He gained risk management experience in London with BNP Paribas, Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ and most recently with Bank of America, where he was a funds credit risk analyst.
Manuel Echeverría, Optimal’s chief executive and chief investment officer, says: ‘These new hires demonstrate our continued commitment to strengthening our risk management process and ensuring the robustness of our investment process.’
