iShares, the exchange-traded funds platform of BlackRock, has expanded its EMEA fixed income sales team.
This comes in response to the growing investor demand across continental Europe for fixed income ETFs.
Jessica Eistrand and Deri Bainge both join as directors, with Eistrand covering the Nordics and Benelux and Bainge covering Germany, Switzerland and Austria. They will report into Leen Meijaard, head of iShares EMEA sales.
Eistrand has over 13 years of sales experience in the Nordic region and joins from StormHarbour, where she worked in the European client solutions team and was responsible for managing Nordic institutional clients. Prior to this, Eistrand worked at JP Morgan, where she provided advisory services on asset allocation and alternative investment strategies, for the bank’s top Nordic financial and institutional investors.
With over 10 years of experience in sales across German speaking regions in Europe, Bainge joins from Credit Agricole CIB, where he spent four years marketing a broad range of assets in the debt markets division. He was previously vice president in the fixed income sales team at Nomura, predominantly focused on structured credit derivatives, and was vice president of structured credit sales at Bank of America prior to that.
Meijaard says: “By offering diverse, low cost exposure to traditionally opaque markets in a single trade, fixed income ETFs are becoming increasingly popular among institutions and private investors across Europe. ETFs offer a wide variety of fixed income exposures spanning the global bond spectrum from government bonds through to high yield and emerging market debt.
“Jessica and Deri will play an important role, providing product insight, solutions and explanations for the multiple uses of fixed income ETFs to investors based in northern and continental Europe. Their hires complement the continued expansion of our EMEA fixed income product range which has seen USD4.2bn in inflows since the start of the year demonstrating the importance of fixed income to the growth of iShares and the wider ETF industry.”
