Turner Investment Partners, a US investment firm owned by its own staff, said it has expanded its private client group by hiring seven sales people as external and internal wholesalers.

The newly enlarged group is seeking to win new investment-management business for Turner from organisations and affluent individual investors in the managed account, investment advisory, family office, and private wealth management markets, the company said in a statement.

The new external wholesalers, who are responsible for cultivating new and existing relationships with brokers, investment advisors, and financial planners and gaining sales in an assigned geographic region, are these four people:

John Caron, who covers the regions of North Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Arkansas; Sherrie English, who is responsible for South Texas and Louisiana; Geoffrey Haefner, who covers Pennsylvania and Delaware; and Scott Mahoney, who handles sections of the Southeast.

Assisting the external wholesalers in their work are three internal wholesalers, who are responsible for developing sales leads with potential Turner clients:

Brian Campbell, who is based at Turner’s headquarters in Berwyn, Pennsylvania; Justin Edell, who works in Chicago; and Dan Holloway, who is based in Berwyn.

All seven fill newly created positions and report to Gary Ross, managing director of the Private Client Group.

Turner expects to hire additional external and internal wholesalers for the group, which is part of the firm’s Distribution Team. Turner, founded in 1990, manages more than $15 billion in stocks in alternative, core, growth, international, quantitative, and value portfolios on behalf of institutions and individuals, as of 30 June 2009.