Lombard Odier Investment Managers appoints Ian Clarke as Deputy Chief Investment Officer for its Fixed Income and Currencies business.  Mr Clarke’s appointment underlines LOIM’s determination to continue building its London-based expertise, where the firm already has more than 20 staff. He will report to Stéphane Monier, Chief Investment Officer of Fixed Income and Currencies at LOIM and focus on developing the unit’s investment processes.  “We have built a unique business offering innovative solutions that combine the best of traditional and alternative investment approaches across absolute return and high-conviction directional strategies,” said Mr Monier. “Ian’s extensive expertise in fixed income and currencies will be invaluable in expanding the reach of our business.” 

In its fixed income business, LOIM has pioneered a fundamentally weighted benchmark approach that gives a sophisticated measure of an issuer’s ability to meet its obligations. This ensures an alternative for investors who have recognised the weaknesses of a market cap approach which allocates the greatest weighting to economies or companies with the largest debt.  Mr Clarke was most recently Head of Internal Fixed Income at Abu Dhabi Investment Authority in Abu Dhabi, where he worked since 2003, including three years with Mr Monier. He was also head of fixed income and currencies at the investment authority and prior to joining that business Mr Clarke worked at Deutsche Asset Management in London, where he was Chief Investment Officer of Fixed Income (UK).

He has also worked for Morgan Stanley and The United Bank of Kuwait in London.  Geneva-headquartered LOIM, a unit of private bank Lombard Odier Darier Hentsch & Cie., managed 35.8 billion Swiss francs on behalf of clients at the end of March, of which 13.6 billion francs was in fixed income strategies. LOIM offers clients a range of innovative products including thematic investments, convertibles funds, fundamentally weighted fixed income products and more than $3 billion in single manager hedge funds. LOIM’s managers seek to deliver performance by identifying sources of both risk and return through absolute return, active and passive strategies.