FRANCE - Nicolas Sobczak has been named as the new chief investment officer of the €33.4bn Fonds de Réserve pour les Retraites (FRR).

Sobczak, 39, succeeds Jean-Louis Nakamura who was appointed head of the French civil service pension fund ERAFP (Etablissement de retraite additionnelle de la fonction publique) by the government earlier this month.

Prior to joining the FRR, Sobczak was senior European economist with Goldman Sachs in its Paris office. He was "responsible for the macroeconomic analysis of the eurozone and its interaction with financial markets," the FRR said in a statement.

He started his career as an economist for the French Ministry of Finance, where he was involved in various aspects of economic forecasting and modeling for policy purposes.

Goldman Sachs told IPE it had not yet found a replacement for Sobczak.

The FRR also said it had re-appointed Global Securities Consulting Services Limited (GSCS) following a tender for a service provider to assist in reducing transaction costs last April.

GSCS was awarded the contract to analyse the best execution of transactions completed by companies, to which the fund has entrusted the management of its assets for another three years.