UK – Gartmore Investment Management has hired Gil Knight as vice president, senior portfolio manager, to boost its US equities team.

Knight will join Gartmore’s 30-strong US equities team, which has around 17.8 billion dollars under management. He will be based in Gartmore's offices outside Philadelphia and report to Young Chin, global chief investment officer, equities.

Gartmore said he was previously managing director and senior portfolio manager of MTB Investment Advisers.

Gartmore’s chief executive Glyn Jones said: "Gil's appointment is another step in our ongoing commitment to attract and to retain the world class investment talent that can provide our clients with the superior investment performance that they seek."

Meanwhile Gartmore has announced that it has won a 150 million-pound (214 million-euro) “high alpha” UK equities mandate from a leading European institution, which it declined to name.

“The mandate is the third such UK equities high alpha mandate win since August (the other two are UK pension funds) and brings the total now invested in UK Equities high alpha to 255 million pounds,” the firm said.

It added that it has won more than three billion pounds of new institutional specialist business since 2002.