** Royal & Sun Alliance expands Spanish business **
Victoria Huerta has been appointed as sales director of retail and institutional funds at the Madrid office of Royal & Sun Alliance Investments Luxembourg. She will be responsible for marketing the fund products to pension funds, banks and retail clients. Huerta joins from FTSE International where she worked as sales and marketing in Athens, Lugano, Madrid, Milan and Rome.

** Former Czech finance minister joins Raiffeisenbank **
Pavel Mertlík, former deputy prime minister and minister of finance of the Czech Republic has been named chief economist of Raiffeisenbank in Prague, the Czech subsidiary of Austrian Raiffeisen Zentralbank Österreich. Mertlík will take part in macroeconomic research as well as strategic and operative decision-making. He started his career as teaching assistant at the University of Economics in Prague in 1983, joined the Czech national bank in 1995, and the country’s government in 1998.

** Abdzhiev joins board of Saglasie **
Georgi Abadzhiev, chairman of Bulgarian insurance group Vitosha, is joining the board of directors of pension insurance company Saglasie. The move follows the announcement of a collaboration program between the two companies.

** Norton Rose hires two pensions lawyers **
London based law firm Norton Rose has recruited two lawyers from Nabarro Nathanson to its pensions team as partners. Lesley Browning and Peter Ford are members of the Association of Pension Lawyers. Browning sits on the education and seminars sub-committee and Ford is a member of the main committee of the organisation.
Laura Millington is also joining the pensions team as assistant solicitor.

** Edinburgh recruits derivates manager **
Alan Murray has been appointed as a derivatives fund manager at Edinburgh Fund Managers. Murray, joining from Scottish Life, will advise on derivative overlay strategies as well as develop new products and markets for the company.

** Miller leaves management to become consultant **
Diane Miller has joined consultants William M Mercer in London as senior investment consultant. Miller, formerly assistant director of UK equities at Morley Fund Managers, will advise institutional pension funds on investment objectives and strategy, investment manager selection and asset liability modelling.

** Gissings appoints new director **
David Brooks has been appointed as a non-executive director at the London based employee benefits advisor Gissings. Brooks, currently chief executive of European operations at component manufacturer Dura Automotive, has been a partner with consultants KPMG for sixteen years.


** FIS expands client services team **Friends Ivory & Sime has expanded its institutional client services team by recruiting Polly Watts and Bibi Tabisim as directors of the team. Watts joins the company from Aon Consulting where she was an investment consultant and socially responsible investment specialist. Tabisim moves from Wellington Management International.

** Nutbrown renews bonds with old acquaintances**
Keiron Nutbrown is joining London based Investec Asset Management as global government bonds and currency manager. He is leaving Invesco, where he formerly worked with Paul Griffiths and Michael Markham, who have also recently moved to Investec.

** Aon hires Midlands third party pension head **
Ian Bell has been appointed as head of third party pensions administration at the Birmingham office of Aon Consulting. He will be responsible for process re-engineering and development.

** Ojerielev to analyse European emerging bond markets **
Igor Ojereliev is joining Zurich Scudder Investments as a portfolio manager and analyst in its emerging market bond team in London. Ojereliev, moving from Citigroup Asset Management in London, will focus on Eastern European debt markets.

** RLAM expands overseas equity business **
Royal London Asset Management has appointed four new fund managers to its overseas equity team. Paul Heaton, Kevin Lilley, Perhad Merwanji and Jacqueline Simpson will report to Philip Lawlor, head of the department at the manager. Merwanji, joining from Schroders Investment Management, will be responsible for managing pension funds at RLAM. Heaton moves from Deutsche Securities in Tokyo after fifteen years in the country. Lilley, formerly pan-European portfolio manager at TT International, will have responsibility for unitised products at the firm. Simpson, moving from Groupama Asset Management, will develop RLAM’s exposure to Australian equities.

** Murray goes SRI at Morley **
Julian Murray is leaving Deutsche Asset Management to join the socially responsible investment team at Morley Fund Management. He will be managing the Norwich Union Sustainable Future Global Growth fund and will report to Clare Brook, director of socially responsible investment at Morley.

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