As 2024 kicks off, SRP looks back at the most relevant people moves in the structured product industry in the past year.

Unicredit

Nicola Francia (right), head of private investor products (PIP) & Southern Europe coverage at Unicredit in Milan joined Unicredit’s Group Investment Strategy (GIS) division as a managing director. 

Francia is part of the team responsible for defining and communicating the bank’s investment strategy for all client segments, managing portfolios under mandate and supporting related client activity within the wealth management and private banking franchise. He remained based in Milan and reports directly to Alessandro Caviglia, chief investment officer, Italy at Unicredit Group.

Francia has held several senior roles within the bank’s structured products business including head of private investor products (PIP) Italy, head of PIP external network Italy and public distribution Italy & France, and head of external network and public distribution of private investors products (PIP) Italy.

Before he joined UniCredit in January 2015, Francia spent the majority of his career working for ABN Amro and RBS, covering various roles in private investor products distribution.

Cristian Comsa (right) relocated from London to Milan to start a new position as managing director, head of funds and credit structured products trading.

Comsa has been with Unicredit for 15 years with a reporting line to Francesco Robertella, managing director, head of structured products trading, since early 2020.

In London, Comsa was most recently co-head of funds and credit structured products trading from August 2021. Before that, he was head of structured funds and linear cross assets trading at the bank after serving as head of time invariant portfolio protection (TIPP)/constant proportion portfolio insurance (CPPI)/gap option trading.

Comsa joined Unicredit in 2008 as a director in fund derivatives trading from Lehman Brothers where he spent three years as an associate in fund derivatives trading.

In May, Frank Weingarts, head of private investor products central & eastern Europe at Unicredit, extended his term at the Austrian certificate association (Zertifikate Forum Austria or ZFA) as a chairperson along with Heike Arbter for two years. Weingarts has worked for over 30 years at the Italian commercial bank.  

Van Lanschot Kempen (VLK)

Marcel Pronk (right) started a new role as director treasury sales, structured products & FX at VLK based in Amsterdam.

The appointment followed the Dutch independent wealth manager’s decision to merge the structured products sales team and the treasury sales team within its treasury department. The two units were led by Pronk and Odette Arnouts, respectively. They are now the new co-heads of the combined team reporting to Loes van den Dries, head of treasury at VLK.

Through the merge, the bank aims to grow both the structured products business and the foreign exchange business, according to Pronk. Other team members include Floris van Iersel and Steph Egter van Wissekerke.

Prior to taking up his new role, Pronk was director securities marketing structured products at VLK. In this role he was responsible for structuring and sales of structured products for private investors via distribution channels like private wealth managers, retail banks, asset managers, family offices and investment boutiques across Europe.

Vontobel

In July, the Swiss structured products provider named Markus Pfister (right), head of structured solutions and treasury (SS&T), as its new chief operating officer (COO), succeeding Felix Lenhard, effective from 1 January 2024.

Pfister joined Vontobel as head of financial products engineering and development in 2004 and took over his most recent role in 2020. He has served as a member of the executive committee of Bank Vontobel since 2020.

Lenhard has served the Swiss bank for over 22 years, including 13 years as COO and member of the executive committee.

Meanwhile, Vontobel appointed Otto Huber as the new head of the SS&T centre of excellence with a reporting line to Christel Rendu de Lint, head of investments.

Most recently, Huber acted as head of treasury and fixed income solutions at Vontobel from 2020. Previously, he spent nearly 15 years at Credit Suisse where his last position was global head of liquidity risk management.

In September, Konstantinos Pampoukidis (right), formerly at Luma Financial Technologies, joined Vontobel in a business engineering role. Based in Zurich, he reports to Otto Huber.

Pampoukidis spent two years at Luma as a sales manager for Europe following the opening of the platform’s first European office in Zurich. Prior to that, he was at Leonteq Securities for five years, including, among others, as a director in the smart hedging issuance platform team. He also had a stint at Credit Suisse in Switzerland with responsibility of market risk and investment strategy.

Georg von Wattenwyl (right), Vontobel’s global head of structured solutions financial institutions,  was re-elected as the president of Swiss Structured Products Association (SSPA) in October, taking over from Pfister. Previously, Von Wattenwyl was a member of the SSPA board for 10 years until 2019, including five years as president.

Von Wattenwyl returned to Switzerland after his four years in Singapore and was once the president of the Swiss Chamber of Commerce in Singapore since 2019. He joined Vontobel in 1998 as a market maker in derivatives before becoming the company’s global head of financial products, advisory and distribution in 2007. He started his career at Credit Suisse

Main image: Bluraz/Adobe Stock.