GERMANY- Invesco Asset Management Deutschland’s Joerg Kraemer is to leave the company to join Munich-based HypoVereinsbank.

Kraemer, who was chief economist at Invesco’s European Structured Products Group, will take up a similar post at HVB at the beginning of January 2005. He will be head of the economics department from April.

He succeeds Martin Huefner, 62, HVB’s chief economist since 1998.

Invesco said Kraemer’s successor had not yet been appointed. The asset manager told IPE there would no longer be a chief economist in the group following a structural change in 2003.

The appointment of a strategist will come when Invesco finds the right candidate

HVB has appointed Kraemer in a bid to offer institutional investors a “cross asset approach” to the market.

HVB’s spokesman Knut Hansen explained that Kraemer will have a new function aside from the traditional role of following the economic development of the bank and advising on the general economic outlook.

As the bank has merged its global research, foreign exchange and fixed income units with the economy department, the new chief economist would be “much nearer” to clients, especially institutional investors, offering his advice on the most suitable investments.

Kraemer’s predecessors have also acted as advisors to clients, but on a limited scale. The concept of chief-economist actively engaged in advising clients is relatively new in Germany, he said.

“Clients are now coming to us and no longer ask ‘what shall I buy?’ but rather ‘give us a full picture of the market’. We are trying to establish a strong cross-asset approach.”

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