Daniel Melley has joined Putnam Investments in a newly created senior position responsible for the firm's efforts serving institutional clients and investors in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA). Based in London, Melley (pictured) will report directly to Jeffrey L Gould, head of Putnam Global Institutional Management.   "In the coming years, we expect to see an ongoing evolution of the institutional marketplace within Europe, the Middle East and Africa, presenting its own unique set of opportunities," says Gould. "As the region continues to seek an array of innovative strategies, leading investment thought leadership and an unyielding commitment to

Eaton Partners, a placement agents and advisory firm for private fund sponsors, has formed a distinct team that will work with and raise capital for unique private credit strategies globally.  Targeted strategies include asset-backed and direct corporate lending, distressed debt, real estate credit, and other specialty credit.    The team will primarily focus on representing credit managers located in the US, Europe and Asia.   “Recent regulatory hurdles have led to a secular retrenchment from banks in the commercial lending arena, and as a result, we’ve seen that opportunities for private credit managers are greater than ever,” says Jeff Davis

RBC Global Asset Management (RBC GAM) has appointed four new hires to the firm’s advisory solutions group. They are Edward Bernson and Charleen Sheehan as associate directors of advisory solutions, David D Smith as director of advisory solutions and Alexandra Zhmakina as junior associate director of advisory solutions.   "At RBC Global Asset Management, we are committed to building out our multi-channel distribution capabilities to complement our expanding investment capabilities," says Matthew Appelstein (pictured), head of distribution for RBC GAM. "Today's announcement is the latest demonstration of how we're growing our footprint in the professional buyer marketplace across the US.

Calamos Investments has appointed co-chief investment officer and head of fixed income strategies R Matthew Freund as co-portfolio manager on a variety of the firm’s investment products.    Freund (pictured) brings more than 25 years of investment management experience and most recently served as chief investment officer at USAA Investments, where he oversaw more than USD140 billion in assets and led the teams responsible for the portfolio management of USAA's mutual funds and affiliated portfolios, including P&C and life insurance products.   John Koudounis, chief executive officer, says: "Matt brings extensive expertise to a wide range of our existing portfolios

Prestige Fund Management (PFM) has appointed Peter Anderson as a director. Anderson has a career spanning nearly 30 years, split between the UK and Cayman with international accounting groups Coopers & Lybrand (PWC), Benbow Anderson, Deloitte Touche and Rawlinson & Hunter.   He is a past president of the Cayman Islands Society of Professional Accountants. He is registered as a professional director with the Cayman Island Monetary Authority (CIMA).   Anderson brings to Prestige a wide range of accountancy and financial experience gained from a long career in financial accounting and professional business services.   Craig Reeves, founder of Prestige

City Financial has made four senior operations hires with Amy Wong, William Dumas, Justin Brodersen and Simon Taylor all having joined the firm with effect from 1 December 2016. All four will report directly to Lou Thorne, global chief operating officer.   They all join from Fortress Investment Group where they previously worked with Thorne in the liquid markets business.   Wong was co-director of operations and treasury, Dumas was co-director of operations, Brodersen was director of middle office, and Taylor was UK operations manager.   Wong, Dumas and Broderson will be based in New York, while Taylor will be

Velocity Trade has appointed Joseph Farrell as head of quantitative research. Farrell (pictured) is accompanied by senior analyst Tony Popowich.   "Joe's objective approach to research as well as his team's excellent reputation and track record made his team a natural fit for our firm and institutional client objectives" says Simon Grayson, Velocity Trade group CEO. "We look forward to combining our disciplined unemotional methodology with the best execution practices of Velocity Trade.”

Singapore Exchange (SGX) has appointed Michael Luk as the new head of fixed income origination and sales, effective 1 January 2017. Reporting to Chew Sutat, SGX head of equities and fixed income, Luk is tasked with spearheading the growth of SGX’s fixed income businesses through deeper and broader relationships with market participants. This includes extending SGX regional leadership in bond listings and driving institutional client adoption of OTC trading in the Asian bond market via SGX’s new Bond Pro trading platform.   “I am happy to have Michael join SGX. His wealth of experience will bring great value and contribute to the

Almax Analytics, a software as a service (SaaS) provider delivering actionable insights from Big Data, has appointed Ralf Roth to its advisory board. Roth spent nearly 20 years as a Deutsche Bank executive and another handful leading Elektron at Thomson Reuters.   He will support the company from his New York offices.   “I am proud to be part of the Almax team as their approach of applying natural language processing and deep machine learning to news data is unique and makes an existing dataset more relevant as a trading signal,” says Roth (pictured). “What is even more exciting is

Global Prime Partners (GPP) has appointed Mike Ward as head of new business development. Ward (pictured) arrives from Nomura where he was co-head of EMEA equities. Prior to this he was head of equity sales, EMEA at Bank of America Merrill Lynch.   Ward brings with him a wealth of experience across global markets product lines and a deep understanding of EMEA-based clients.   Ward’s first business initiative at GPP is to expand its offering with the launch of a structured product division during the first quarter of 2017, initially for UK onshore clients, capitalising on GPP’s core strengths in