GERMANY - German consultant FERI Institutional Advisors has appointed four new managing directors while confirming that Hartmut Leser, another MD, is to leave at the end of September.

The four new MDs are Reiner Dietz, Werner Goricki, Carsten Hermann and Bernd Kreuter. They join a team of three other MDs who, apart from Leser, are Dirk Söhnholz, Jürgen Olbermann and Min Sun.

FIA said that with its new seven-member MD team, it was in an even better position to offer the full range of consultant services, including asset-liability matching, asset allocation advising and asset manager selection. The seven MDs report to Arnd Thorn, FIA's chief executive.

"With this new structure, FIA is well prepared for continued growth and plans to further expand its lead position in institutional advising," FIA said.

Last December, FIA's management told IPE in an interview that the total number of institutional assets it advised on was around €250bn-€270bn.

IPE reported in July that Leser would leave FERI. It is still unclear where he is going to and FIA said only that he would "be taking up a new challenge".

FIA's restructuring is the second within just a year amid the departure of several senior managers.

The restructuring in July 2005, which brought in Thorn from Allianz Global Investors, was prompted by the departure of four FIA staff, including Torsten Köpke, who joined Watson Wyatt as the new head of its investment consultant team in Frankfurt.

Moreover, two consultants - Rainer Buth and Uwe Rieken - left FIA in 2003 to start up Faros, a new Frankfurt-based investment consultancy. Since late 2004, Buth and Rieken have also recruited two former colleagues at FIA as new partners at Faros. They are Frank Umlauf and Gernot Specht.

FIA has insisted time and again that despite the exodus of staff, it has not lost one institutional client to its competitors, including Alpha Portfolio Advisors, Mercer, Watson Wyatt, RMC and Faros.

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