Investec Wealth & Investment has added Bryan Burrough to its London-based charities division as a senior investment director, continuing a rash of charities hires being made by firms in the UK.

Burrough was latterly managing director and chief investment officer for charities at BlackRock. Before this he was with Merrill Lynch Investment Managers and prior to that he was a pension and charity portfolio manager at Cazenove & Co.

Investec Wealth & Investment has about a thousand charities clients, amounting to £1.6 billion ($2.6 billion) in assets under management. Its charities team is now nine-strong.

Burrough’s is the latest in a run of senior charities hires in recent months. September saw Jupiter Asset Management name Andrew Clark - the former head of business development for Schroders’ private banking arm - as its new head of private clients and charities, while this month JO Hambro Investment Management recruited Edward Novis as an investment manager for its charities team.

While charities are certainly not awash with cash in the current economic climate, this has contributed to an uptick in charities business since many are merging or re-evaluating their investment management provision.

This trend and the challenges of serving charities clients is the subject of an interview with James Pike, head of charities at JOHIM, which features in WealthBriefing today.