Gam Investments has given the role of senior investment manager for fixed income to Roland Mueller.
In his new role, Mueller will report to Andrea Quapp, investment director for multi-asset class solutions and lead manager of segregated accounts and funds primarily for European and Swiss institutional clients. He will be based in the company’s mothership in Zurich, Switzerland.
Quapp said in a statement: “It is a great pleasure to have Roland join Gam as a highly experienced portfolio manager with deep knowledge of credit and fixed income strategies. He will be a great asset to the team and complement us perfectly in providing our clients with the best solutions from a conviction-based active asset manager.”
Mueller comes to the firm from Bank J Safra Sarasin in Basel, where he worked for eight years as a portfolio manager and in client relationship management. Among other responsibilities, he launched and managed one of the first global sustainable high yield funds and was deputy head of bonds and absolute return strategies.
Before joining BMW AG in Munich as risk manager in liquidity and financial markets, he worked for Lazard Asset Management in Frankfurt as senior credit and quant portfolio manager.
Mueller is not the only new hire made by Gam in recent weeks. A month ago, the firm appointed Christian Zeitler to be its new head of Switzerland wholesale distribution.
Like Mueller, Zeitler is going to be based in Zurich where he will be responsible for driving the Switzerland wholesale strategy and strengthening the firm’s distribution proposition for financial advisers, discretionary fund managers, multi-managers, wealth platforms, and private banks.
The news follows an announcement in February that the firm had had to adjust its profit targets after seeing its assets shed £18bn in value.
As we wrote back then, group assets under management fell sharply to CHF 100bn (£80bn) at the end of December, down CHF 22bn (£17.6bn) from the start of the year.
Off the back of the falling assets Gam said it had ‘revisited’ its financial targets and was now predicting pre-tax profit of at least CHF 50m, underlying operating margin of 20%-30% and a compensation ratio of 45-50% by full year 2024.
