GERMANY - International consultant Watson Wyatt has hired Feri Institutional Management’s Jürgen Heiny and Zeljko Tipuric, for its Investment Consulting practice in Germany.

Their appointments follow the recent recruitment of Feri’s Torsten Köpke’s to lead the Watson Wyatt’s German investment consulting business, which is based in Frankfurt and Munich.

Heiny and Tipuric will join Watson Wyatt as consultants at the end of the summer.

Heiny, who was primarily responsible for consulting projects to German Sparkassen involving savings and loans, has also eight years experience of portfolio management including equity, fixed income and derivatives.

Tipuric, who was a permanent member of Feri’s investment committee, worked at ABN AMRO Bank before joining Feri in 2002. He has experience of investment banking and management, including manager research, monitoring across asset classes and multi-manager fund implementation with the master-KAGs and global custodians.

Köpke said: “The rapidly evolving German marketplace is becoming increasingly open to new investment ideas, some of which are being implemented by institutional investors.”

Kevin Carter, European head of investment consulting at Watson Wyatt, said: “The German market is important for us, so in order to build on some of our initial successes there it was essential to get local skills and experience on board.”

Feri’s managing director Hartmut Leser told IPE that the firm had already recruited Heiny, Tipuric and Köpke’s successors, but declined to identify them as they are yet to join the firm. Tipuric’s successor will join Feri in two weeks, Leser added.

He also said that Feri was undergoing restructuring which will result in the launch of a new team of about 15 consultants exclusively focused on asset management selection.

Leser said that most members of the new team were internal appointments and the recruitment of new consultant was currently underway. The head of the team has already been chosen among Feri staff, Leser also said

Earlier this week IPE reported that Feri appointed Arnd Thorn to the new position of overall institutional business head. Thorn was previously head of the German arm of PIMCO, the bond fund specialist unit of Allianz Global Investors (AGI).

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