Russia’s Verno makes three senior hires, plans to launch debt fund

By Andrei Skvarsky.

Verno Capital, a fund manager focused on Russia and the CIS, has announced three senior hires and a plan to launch a Russia debt fund.

Natalia Zagvozdina comes over from Renaissance Capital to head the research team at Verno, according to a statement from the Russia-domiciled fund manager, which was set up in 2009 and looks after about $230m for US, European and Middle Eastern institutional investors and high net worth individuals.

Zagvozdina was head of Russian equity research at RenCap.

Tom Adshead, previously head of research at Moscow-headquartered investment manager Kazimir Partners and a 22-year veteran of Russia’s markets, joins as portfolio manager.

Adshead spent early years in his career with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and Credit Suisse First Boston. For the past seven years he has held senior roles at Russian firms Sito Capital, Alfa Capital and IFC Metropol.

Elena Kolchina, who ran the Russian fixed income fund at Renaissance Asset Managers from 2006 to 2013, has been recruited to help to launch and manage Verno’s planned debt fund, which is expected to be up and running in the third quarter of this year.

The Renaissance fixed income fund that she managed outperformed the benchmark by nearly 30% on a cumulative basis and delivered an average annualised return of 10.3% per annum since its inception until the end of May 2013, Verno said. It said its planned debt fund would employ a similar strategy.

Zagvozdina, Adshead and Kolchina “are the perfect fit to add breadth and depth to our investment team,” said Roland Nash, Verno’s senior partner and chief investment strategist and previously head of global research at RenCap.

 “We are excited about being able to further enhance the investment process for the existing equity products and diversifying our product offering with the launch of the debt fund,” he said.

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