GERMANY - Cominvest, the asset management arm of Commerzbank, has replaced its chief investment officer Wolfram Gerdes – less than a year and a half after he joined from Allianz.

He is stepping down at the end of this month and will be replaced by Ingo Mainert with immediate effect, the firm said. Mainert, 43, was previously in charge of private wealth management at Commerzbank.

Gerdes, formerly joint CIO at Allianz Global Investors’ Global Vision product, took over from Wolfgang Plum in January last year.

Cominvest told reporters today that it plans to double its assets under management to €100bn by 2011, with half of the volume coming from institutional clients.

It currently manages €50bn for retail and institutional clients in Germany. Yet since the beginning of 2004, growth in assets has been held down in part by the active use of open architecture by Commerzbank, Germany’s second-largest bank.

Under the strategy, Commerzbank has been offering funds from competitors along with its own. The strategy has however, partly been responsible for €4bn in outflows from Cominvest’s retail funds over the last two years.

Speaking at a news conference in Frankfurt, chief executive Sebastian Klein said that while open architecture would continue, “we, as a big German asset manager, have to return to a path of growth and expand our product platform”.

To do so, Klein unveiled a restructuring programme that entails the elimination of the ADIG brand name for some of Cominvest’s retail funds and the launch of more products derived from alternative asset classes.

Michael Hartmann is also joining Cominvest’s board as its new head of fund administration. Hartmann, 45, was director of operations at Commerzbank’s private wealth management unit.

Cominvest said thanks mainly to a strong performance by its institutional business, it had €1bn in net inflows from investors during the first four months of 2006.

Cominvest also said that of Commerzbank’s €120m in profits from asset management last year, it contributed half.

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