Allianz GI appoints M&G's Brown as UK distribution head

Tasked with leading firm's retail arm

Neil Brown spent 20 years with M&G Investments

Allianz Global Investors has poached ex-M&G Investments veteran Neil Brown as its head of UK distribution.

Allianz GI said Brown would be responsible for leading and developing the firm's wholesale, institutional, consultant relations and investment trust businesses in the UK.

He will also help to head up the company's retail arm, it added.

Brown had spent more than 20 years with M&G, most recently as head of UK wholesale and institutional sales. He had previously served as director for global retail sales management for seven years and director of UK discretionary sales for almost five years.

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Allianz GI's head of EMEA Barbara Rupf-Bee said Brown's "experience in distribution management, UK sales across all segments and his strong knowledge of the changing regulatory landscape will help further strengthen our position in the UK across wholesale and institutional markets".

Before joining M&G as investment writer in 2000, Brown had worked on the investment desk at Kaupthing Singer & Friedlander.

In a post on LinkedIn, Brown said: "M&G is a special company with many talented, lovely and occasionally amusing people at its core. I have been privileged to work with many such people over 20+ years and now count lots of you as friends.

"Thank you all for making work so frequently a pleasure and so rarely a chore. Your recent messages of support and ridiculous generosity in the whip-round has genuinely humbled me."