UK – Gartmore Investment Management has appointed Charles Beazley as head of institutional and alternative investments.

The new senior management role has been created following Gartmore’s business growth in the hedge fund and institutional arena.

Beazley will be responsible for overseeing the sales and marketing of alternative investment products, including Gartmore’s single manager hedge funds and Gartmore Riverview’s fund of hedge funds, in addition to the institutional business.

He will report to the chief executive officer, Glyn Jones, and will also join the Gartmore Board.

Prior to joining Gartmore, Beazley spent 13 years with Merrill Lynch, where he was most recently head of institutional sales and marketing with responsibility for the development and growth of the business in the US.

Gartmore has been steadily growing its hedge fund business. It now has ten hedge funds in its range and last summer acquired Riverview International Group Inc, a specialist hedge fund of funds business in the US. In September this year, Gartmore also announced that it would be forming an alliance with Aspect Capital, a global hedge fund company.

The Gartmore group has 48.8 billion pounds in assets under management. The hedge fund business has grown to around 3.4 billion dollars in just over four years.