Specialist boutique Heartwood Investment Management appointed Graham Bishop as investment director. Bishop is responsible for Heartwood's tactical asset allocation while also supporting the management of multi-asset strategies. He reports to Noland Carter, head of Heartwood and chief investment officer (CIO). Before joining Heartwood, Bishop was a global macro strategist at Citi, where he helped design short and longer term cross-asset trades and ideas. Prior to Citi, Bishop was at Exane BNP Paribas and Royal Bank of Scotland (formerly ABN Amro) where, in both roles, he was responsible for European equity strategy research. Earlier in his career he was an economist and multi asset strategist at Cazenove Capital Management.

Hilbert Financial Solutions

In February, Anglo-French structured product specialist Hilbert Financial Solutions appointed two new members to work as part of their 'industry leaders' consultancy board. The new additions include Hein Donders of the French IFA firm Olifan Group and Andia Shtepani of Mazars, Luxembourg, who, together with their fellow board members will work to improve on the quality of Hilbert's products and reposition the business in both the French and Luxembourg markets.

David McFadyen (pictured), joined Hilbert in June as its UK business development manager to manage FCA regulated intermediary client accounts and market its discretionary portfolio management service. McFadyen joined Hilbert from Meteor Asset Management which he joined in 2016 to set up its institutional business development team responsible for providing bespoke structured products to institutional investment managers in the UK. McFadyen started his career at Datastream International (now part of Thomson Reuters) in the mid 80's, followed by positions as an investment trust analyst at Credit Suisse and ABN Amro. He joined the investment trust team at Winterflood Securities in July 2007 in a dual sales/analyst role and subsequently took on sales roles at Teathers Ltd and Matrix Corporate Capital.

HSBC

Regis Loeb, managing director and head of European index trading at HSBC Global Banking and Markets (GBM) in London, left the UK bank in March. Loeb joined the HSBC's equity derivatives division in January 2014 as head of vanilla indices, and reported to Emmanuel Duchene, global head of exotics, equity derivatives trading. Prior to joining HSBC, Loeb was head of equity index trading at Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BAML) also in London. Previously Loeb worked at Barclays, where he held a number of roles including head of European volatility trading, head of European flow trading and head of European index options trading.

Samy Bellaiche, an equity index flow trader at HSBC in Paris, also left the bank. Bellaiche was responsible for flow trading on vanillas and light exotics on European indices since 2011 when he joined the bank from BNP Paribas where he was deputy head of equity options flow trading in London for three years. Prior to that, he was an equity options dispersion trader on the Dax index in Paris for one year. He joined BNP Paribas in 1999 as an index option trader.

In April, HSBC appointed Christopher Denruyter as global head of trading for fund-linked products and cross-asset quantitative investment strategies within global markets at HSBC. Denruyter joined the bank from Credit Suisse, where he was global head of fund-linked products and cross-asset quantitative investment strategies trading and where he started as a quantitative analyst on fund-linked products and interest rates exotics. HSBC also appointed Mohamed Sassi as senior trader within fund-linked products and cross asset quantitative investment strategies trading. Sassi reports to Denruyter and joins from Deutsche Bank, where he worked in hybrid structured trading and quantitative investment strategies and cross-asset risk premia development. Sassi worked previously as a fund-linked products trader at Merrill Lynch. He started his career in equity derivatives at HSBC, as a quant and then a trader.

Patrick Boumalham was appointed global head of markets products at HSBC Private Banking in November. Based in London, Boumalham has the responsibility for the bank's catalogue of capital markets solutions including derivatives and listed options, structured investments, foreign exchange and precious metals as part of its investment advisory and discretionary programmes, and services for self-directed investors. He reports to Stuart Parkinson, chief of staff, HSBC Private Banking.

In his new role, Boumalham will also cover the private bank's tailored private banking, investment and wealth management services to high-net-worth business owners, entrepreneurs, and senior executives. Boumalham took over his new responsibilities after 18 months in his previous role as head of investment solutions sales for private banking and retail at HSBC GBM in Paris where he covered clients in Switzerland, France, Luxembourg and Monaco.

Prior to that he was head of investment solutions sales for private banks, Switzerland, Benelux and Monaco, and he also was deputy head of equity derivatives sales for private banks, Europe, Middle East & Africa (Emea) for over four years.

ING Bank

ING changed the way it sells its structured products following a strategy update for Financial Markets (which is part of the Wholesale Banking division) in October 2016 when the bank declared an intention to offer structured notes only to professional financial institutions, and no longer to external financial intermediaries, partly to control risk management for its clients. The fact that ING no longer sells structured notes to external distributors has also had an impact on the bank's employees, and a number of staff have since left the bank.

Alain Flas, head of sales for products for private investors (PPI) at ING Financial Markets, left the Dutch bank after 16 years of service, to join Finvex, the Belgian index provider, as the companies new CEO. Flas had been ING's head of structured products since November 2013, when he succeeded Bert Korevaar who was promoted to global head, client solutions group (CSG) financial institutions.

Flas, a veteran in investment banking, was deputy global head of PPI at ING between September 2010 and October 2013. During that time he was also global head of sales for global equity products (equity cash, equity derivatives & equity finance) and before that global head of equity derivatives sales.

Flas was chairman of the board and founding member of the Belgian Structured Investment Products Association (Belsipa). He stepped down as chairman in February after having chaired the trade body for two consecutive terms since its inception in 2013. Next to his role at Belsipa, Flas was also chairman of the board at ING Solutions Investment Management (ISIM), the asset management vehicle of ING Group in Luxembourg, from December 2013 until November 2016. The company, which is a joint venture between ING Belgium and ING Luxembourg, manages undertakings for collective investment in transferable securities (Ucits) and alternative investment funds (AIFs).

Marcel Pronk, director, sales of structured products for private investors at ING Financial Markets left the bank in August. Pronk's position had become redundant after ING reorganised its structured products business. Since then, Pronk had only been working on the Dutch bank's structured products desk for a few days a week to take care of the remaining business.

Zico Yeh started a new job as director, single family office desk at ING Wholesale Banking, effective as of November 1. Yeh reports to Marc Debois, head of single family office desk. Yeh has a long history in structured products. From March 2014, Yeh was the head of structured investment sales, products for private investors and direct distribution for Netherlands, Scandinavia, UK and Ireland, at ING Financial Markets. Before that, Yeh was vice president structured investments Nordics & Netherlands, also at ING Financial Markets, a position he fulfilled for 10 years and which included cross asset sales to institutional investors, private/retail banks, asset managers and other financial institutions in Scandinavia and the Netherlands.

ING announced that ING Wholesale Banking remains committed to the distribution of structured notes and over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives (all underlyings) from the different home countries to its own retail and private banking clients via the new investment products retail (IPR) team as well as to its corporate equity derivatives solutions offering.

The IPR team is headed by Dick Ravesteijn, managing director, head of IPR & client execution services, while the corporate equity derivatives solutions offering will be under Guido van Ingen, head of corporate sales for Western Europe & Americas.