Vestra Wealth, the London-based wealth management firm that was set up last summer and dramatically hired a large team of UBS staff, has announced its investment advisory board team.

The board includes Prince Rupert Loewenstein, the former financial advisor to the Rolling Stones rock group and Derek Scott, a former economic advisor to ex-UK prime minister Tony Blair.

The firm, located in London’s City financial district, was founded by former UBS employee David Scott. Scores of his ex-UBS colleagues went across to the new firm last year, leading to an acrimonious legal fight with the Swiss bank over employment contracts. Vestra later agreed a court settlement agreeing that no UBS staff not yet at Vestra could begin work there until April this year.

In a statement, Vestra said that the other investment advisory board members will be: Hendrik van Riel, chairman, who was previously head of JP Morgan Investment Management and responsible for the international strategy of JP Morgan Fleming Asset Management outside the US; Jeremy Attard-Manché, managing partner at Tell Investments and previously responsible for all hedge fund distribution in Europe for Merrill Lynch in London.

Also joining the advisory board is Pedro de Noronha, managing partner at Noster Capital, a global value investing hedge fund. He was previously a proprietary trader at JP Morgan, managing proprietary risk arbitrage and special situations fund. Before that he was an investment banker at Merrill Lynch International in London. Rounding out the six-member board team is Meena Lakshmanan, who was previously an asset manager at GLG Partners covering risk management, asset allocation and quantitative strategies.  She has been appointed as head of quantitative analysis at Vestra.

The advisory board will complement the in-house investment committee by providing an independent view of markets and global economic issues, Vestra said.

“Due to current economic instability and increased awareness of market conditions, we see this as vital, particularly when correlation between asset classes has converged and some of the typical modelling tools being used are being challenged,” said David Scott, managing partner at Vestra.

“We have brought together a first-class advisory board whose expertise across a broad range of disciplines will be invaluable to both Vestra and to our growing client base. At the core to our investment approach is a commitment to providing clients with the very best independent investment advice, based on a highly developed strategic and tactical analysis of the market,” said Mr Scott.