ABN AMRO is planning to double the size of its New York private investor products group, which sells derivatives-based investment products to retail and high-net-worth investors. Gijs Kaars Sijpesteijn, head of private investor products for the Americas, said, "We are going to build aggressively on our product business."
The Dutch house will be adding products such as interest-rate notes to its offering and last month hired Stephen Manning from RBC Dain Rauscher as a fixed-income derivatives specialist to oversee this. ABN is already one of the top issuers for reverse convertible equity notes, but Sijpesteijn said it is also looking to distribute equity basket products, as well as principal-protected and leveraged notes. The firm last week announced the hires of Charlie O'Flaherty and Brian Jones as co-heads of the PIP group. The pair come from distributor Incapital and have experience across both equity and fixed income investment products.
Sijpesteijn said ABN will look to add approximately five to six salespeople over the next year. The team is currently six strong, including three sales people.
