GLG poaches Morgan Stanley's European strategy co-head

Ben Funnell has quit his position as co-head of European strategy in London to join GLG Partners as a fund manager. He will work on mixed-asset fund strategies alongside Noam Gottesman, a partner of the London-based hedge fund.

Funnell has worked for Morgan Stanley’s European strategy unit since 1997 and was made co-head in October 2003 along with Teun Draaisma. He has focused on equity market direction, sector rotation and stock selection, and was also a member of the bank’s global and individual investor group allocation committees.

Previously, Funnell worked in corporate restructuring in the consultancy practice of Coopers & Lybrand (now PricewaterhouseCoopers) before joining Morgan Stanley as a transport analyst.

GLG, which has $11.5 billion of assets under management, was founded in 2000 and takes its name from the founding partners of Gottesman, Pierre LaGrange and Jonathan Green. They had worked together at Lehman Brothers since 1995, before which they were at Goldman Sachs.

The Financial Services Authority fined GLG and its ‘star trader’, Philippe Jabre – who is currently on official ‘leave of absence’ – £750,000 each earlier this month for market abuse. Jabre, who was cleared of the more serious charge of deliberate dishonesty, is appealing against the regulator’s finding of market abuse.