The latest moves in wealth management from Europe and the Middle East.

Polar Capital Holdings
Active asset manager Polar Capital has named Alastair Barrie as managing director, North America, in a newly-created role designed to drive US expansion.

Barrie will be responsible for developing and implementing a US wholesale and institutional distribution strategy, and will support CEO Gavin Rochussen in expanding Polar's North American business.

“We believe that the US gives us an enormous opportunity to offer our funds to the institutional community,"  CEO Rochussen said. Barrie brings the "requisite experience and will drive our product distribution and business development in this important market.”

Barrie joins Polar Capital after a decade at Martin Currie, where he was most recently head of US wealth management sales. Before that he spent 12 years in a number of senior roles at Henderson Global Investors.

The London-based firm, founded in 2001, maintains offices in Tokyo, Connecticut, Jersey, Edinburgh, Shanghai and Paris, and manages a combined AuM of £14.7 billion ($18.5 billion) as of September 2018.

Tilney
Making further inroads into Scotland, Tilney has announced that it is moving to new premises in Edinburgh’s Exchange District to make room for growth in the region. The new expanded office will be run by former Standard Life Aberdeen veteran Ronnie Binnie, who has been brought in to manage Tilney's east Scotland business. He will lead a team of 43 and report to Paul Frame, head of Tilney's Scotland and Northern Ireland division.

Binnie worked across financial planning, investment management and business development on the direct and intermediated side during his 27 years at Standard Life Aberdeen, most recently as head of business development at Aberdeen Standard Capital, the group’s discretionary management division.

The large wealth manager based in Mayfair with offices in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen said that it plans to add more staff shortly to the financial planning and investment management teams in Edinburgh. The group manages around £24 billion for clients.

YFM Equity Partners
YFM Equity Partners has appointed Helen Villiers as investment manager. Based at YFM’s London office, Villiers will concentrate on supporting YFM’s new investment activity.

 Villiers, who is a qualified chartered accountant, joins from Grant Thornton’s corporate finance team in London, where she worked with management teams and entrepreneurs on a range of transactions, primarily in the human capital and technology, media and telecoms sectors.