Renaissance Group, the parent company of the brokerage half-owned by billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov, hired former BlackRock manager Plamen Monovski to revive its fund business.
Monovski, who co-managed as much as $9 billion at BlackRock’s Emerging Europe fund until last May, said he was named chief investment officer-designate of Renaissance Asset Managers following a decision to split Renaissance Investment Management into a fund manager and a wealth-advisory unit.
“Our aim is to build the leading emerging markets asset management business,” Monovski said late Tuesday. “It is an ambitious goal, but we have the strategy and team in place to achieve it.”
Monovski’s hiring comes a week after Stephen Jennings, the New Zealander who co-founded Renaissance Capital in 1995, returned as chief executive officer to guide the investment bank’s expansion into Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. Jennings, who remains CEO of Renaissance Group, also hired four senior managers, including Nick Andrews from JPMorgan Chase, as global head of equities.
Jennings, 49, is rebuilding RenCap after the record rout in Russian stocks in the fourth quarter of 2008 forced the brokerage to fire 40 percent of its staff and sell half the business to Prokhorov for $500 million.
Monovski, a native Bulgarian based in London, said he would create a flagship Eastern Europe fund that will comply with the European Union’s UCIT standards to reach investors seeking easier trading, transparency and regulatory protection. Renaissance Investment Management’s existing Cayman Islands-registered funds will be moved to Luxembourg, which will boost transparency and liquidity for investors, he said.
“We will be rolling existing Caymans-registered RIM funds into UCIT structures and moving to an environment that is more transparent, more liquid and more regulated,” Monovski said.
The value of assets managed by RIM, which Jennings started with Andrei Movchan in 2003, peaked in September 2008 at $7 billion and then halved over the following four months as stock prices tumbled and clients pulled out. RIM oversaw $3.6 billion as of Jan. 16, 2009, the last date for which Renaissance would give a figure.
Movchan said by phone that he quit as co-CEO of RIM last February after he and Jennings failed to agree on how to develop the company. Movchan has since founded his own wealth management business, Third Rome, hiring 23 people from RIM. It has $300 million in assets under management, mainly from corporate clients, Movchan said.