GERMANY – European exchange traded funds leader, INDEXCHANGE Investment, has appointed dbi’s Thomas Uhlmann to its management board in a strategic strengthening of its international sales body.

Uhlmann, 44, will take up responsibility for product development and management, and marketing and sales at INDEXCHANGE on 1 November.

He is currently the head of institutional sales at dbi - the institutional asset management arm of the Allianz Group.

According to an INDEXCHANGE statement, Uhlmann’s appointment “is an additional step towards strengthening international sales efforts.”

“Until now we have mainly focussed on sales in Germany. But now we are trying to be stronger throughout Europe,” said an INDEXCHANGE spokesperson.

According to INDEXCHANGE’s founding member Götz Kirchhoff, much of the expansion will be focussed on where funds are registered for public distribution, and also where there is cross listing, eg Switzerland and France.

Uhlmann started his career in portfolio management at the former HYPO Bank, which merged with Vereinsbank in 1998 to form the HVB Group.

Thereafter he was responsible for the acquisition of institutional customers at the investment company Allfonds management, and later at SSGA. He moved to dbi in 2000.

Uhlmann will join Gerhard Weisbrich, 54, and Kirchhoff, 52, on the management board.

Commenting on the appointment, Kirchhoff said, “Thomas Uhlmann brings many years of experience in international asset management to INDEXCHANGE, and he has extensive and close contacts with international institutional customers. He will help us to further build our already very solid market position in Europe and expand our potential customer base.”

In other news, fund of funds manager Daniel Capocci has been named as research associate with the Edhec risk and asset manager research centre based in Luxembourg.

Capocci – working with the institutional & fund management division of Kredietrust Luxembourg – will also lecture finance at Edhec’s business school, and contribute regular papers on hedge fund strategies to the centre’s website, www.edhec-risk.com.

Capocci, 27, has contributed to several books and journals, and regularly speaks on matters related to alternative investment.

Some of his works can be found in ‘Hedge Funds: Insights in Performance Measurement, Risk Analysis, and Portfolio Allocation’ as well as articles in the European Journal of Finance.