The latest moves, appointments and personnel changes among wealth management and related organisations in the UK, the rest of Europe, the Middle East, Africa and select international locations.

Evelyn Partners
UK-based Evelyn Partners, a wealth management group entrusted with £62 billion ($84 billion) of client assets, has appointed Susan Miller-Jones as its new chief people officer. Miller-Jones will join the business in early July, subject to regulatory approval.

Miller-Jones' experience spans a variety of sectors. Formerly at Royal Sun Alliance as UK director of HR, she served in senior HR roles at professional services firms KPMG UK and Brunswick, in the property sector as global head of HR at DTZ, and with Barclays Bank where she was head of HR, Barclays Group Centre.

“We are delighted that Susan is joining the Evelyn Partners leadership team at this significant stage in the development of the business, which is now focused solely on wealth management,” Paul Geddes, CEO of Evelyn Partners, said. “Susan is a great hire for us – she’s a seasoned and successful HR professional, with multi-sector experience and her energy and drive will be a real asset to the business."

Geddes also thanked the outgoing chief people officer, Benne Peto, who saw the business through a rapid period of growth and change, including the merger of Tilney and Smith & Williamson. Peto will be leaving the business in August after a handover to Miller-Jones.

RBC BlueBay Asset Management
RBC BlueBay Asset Management, the asset management division of Royal Bank of Canada, has appointed Jonathan Crown as a portfolio manager for its global equity team, based in London. Crown, who will report to Habib Subjally, managing director and senior portfolio manager, head of global equities, will be joining a team of 16 longstanding global equity specialists who collectively have over 200 years of investment experience.

With two decades of experience as a global equities investor, Crown has spent the majority of his career at Columbia Threadneedle Investments in various roles, where he later became lead manager of several strategies including head of the global and international equity income strategies and lead manager of the Threadneedle Global Equity Income fund. He started his career on the graduate scheme at Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein working on the sell-side in the investment grade credit research team.

“Jonathan’s appointment is a fantastic addition to the longstanding credentials of our global equity team and reinforces our commitment to this asset class. He has a wealth of experience with strong analytical skills and brings deep financials expertise to the role,” Habib said. “More importantly, he brings an investment mindset that is strongly aligned with our fundamental investment process and philosophy which is centred around teamwork and working from a ‘best ideas’ principle on long-only, quality stocks underpinned by bottom-up, fundamental analysis.”

The global equity team consists of industry specialists spanning all global sectors, managing relatively concentrated portfolios. They manage a total of 12 strategies with a collective AuM of $29.2 billion for institutional and wholesale investors across the globe.

M&G Investments
M&G Investments has appointed Neil Godfrey as global head of client group to lead distribution, marketing and client experience teams within asset management. 

Godfrey will be succeeding Neal Brooks who has decided to step down after almost 30 years with M&G. Brooks has served in a number of senior leadership roles across the business, including distribution, business change, product and business development, and investments.

Joining on 16 June, Godfrey will report to Joseph Pinto, chief executive of M&G Investments.

With more than 24 years’ asset management experience, Godfrey previously worked at Barings (formerly Bason Capital) as global head of distribution leading product planning for distribution and client portfolio management, across public and private markets. He has over a decade’s experience designing and taking private asset strategies to market for institutional investors. Prior to this, Godfrey spent five years at Barclays Global Investors, where he was responsible for capital raising and distribution for corporate and financial institutional clients in the UK and EMEA.