Ex-LV= fixed income team joins Friends Life

Insurance giant Friends Life has hired the former LV= fixed income team to run portfolios at its new asset management business.

Friends Life Investments (FLI) – its in-house business launching next year – has recruited Michael Wright, John Hampton, Purna Bhudia and Nigel Bradshaw to spearhead its fixed income offering.

Wright, previously head of fixed interest at LV= Asset Management, becomes director of fixed income. He will be responsible for fixed income asset allocation, and direct management of the government bond portfolios.

Hampton will continue with the management of corporate bond funds in his new role as head of credit for Friends Life Investments. The former manager of the LV= UK Corporate Bond fund will oversee all the institutional corporate bond portfolios and report directly to Wright.

Bhudia and Bradshaw will both continue to report to Hampton and will join the team as corporate bond portfolio managers. The managers are all set to join in January.

FLI will be run as an outsourced independent business and will support the group’s existing businesses, with a particular focus on retirement income.  It will be seeded with £8bn of internal money Mark Versey, chief investment officer of FLI, said: “This is a significant milestone on the journey to launching Friends Life Investments.

“I am delighted to welcome four such talented individuals to our business and I know their collective wealth of experience and talent will greatly contribute to our development and enable us to hit the ground running when we launch in the second half of 2012.”

FLI’s main focus at launch will be fixed income, with other asset classes introduced in due course.