Icelandic bank Glitnir has appointed Raimo Valo from rival Svenska Handelsbanken to head up its investment and asset management operations in Russia. Mr Valo, who is currently head of Svenska's operations in Russia and the former CIS countries, will take up his new position in August. He was involved in setting up the Moscow branch and served as its managing director from 2004. Mr Valo transferred to Moscow from a similar position in Poland. His previous tasks have included establishing and heading up emerging market units at Svenska Handelsbanken and the Finnish bank Merita. Reykjavik-based Glitnir, Iceland's third largest bank with operations in Britain, Denmark, Norway and Sweden, recently acquired Finnish investment banking and asset management group FIM. At the beginning of 2007, Russian regulators approved FIM's first locally domiciled mutual funds which were launched during the second quarter. Mr Valo said: "FIM's products are a great fit for the growing markets of Russia, and this is an excellent time to start up mutual fund operations. Our goal is to harness the existing infrastructure to forge an efficient sales network for Russia.” Jan Forsbom, executive vice president of Glitnir Investment Management: added: "The Russian middle class is rapidly becoming more affluent. We seek to benefit from this growth in Glitnir's Investment Management. We are presently starting up local funds and we believe that demand for our investment management services will see vigorous growth in Russia in the years ahead." FIM has been investing in Russian stocks since 1997 and its large and small Russian cap funds already have €500 million in funds under management. Its target for the first year is to develop a distribution network and to have €100 million under management.