ING Investment Management restructures

Chief investment officer Jan Straatman said the firm - which manages around €300bn in assets under management - would ditch the traditional "silo" based structure of having, for instance, separate equity and fixed income divisions and set up a series of small units to take better advantage of the skills within its business.

It said these boutiques would include a strategy and asset allocation unit to be headed by Eric Siegloff, who was formerly director of tactical asset allocation and investment strategy at the firm, and an emerging market unit to be run by Rob Drijkoningen, who was previously the firm's head of emerging market fixed income before being promoted to head up its multi-asset group.

Straatman - the former chief executive of Pearl-Axial Investments and a former chief investment officer of capital markets at ABP Asset Management - said the restructure would also see the firm merge its credit and equity research teams and set up a separate risk management team, which would report directly to him.

He said the company would also change its bonus structure - spreading payments over two or three years, and clawing them back should managers underperform.

He said: "If the client gets hurt, the bonuses start getting clawed back."

Straatman said he hoped the restructure would be completed by the end of the year - and said the complete line-up of boutiques would be announced when he had finalised the make-up of the individual teams.

He told Global Pensions he had given himself three years to turn the investment performance of the business around.

Straatman said he hoped to consolidate performance this year before seeing improvements following the restructure in years two and three.

He added he hoped this improved performance would lead to greater asset inflows from next year onwards.

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