Olivetree Financial, a leading independent agency broker, has appointed Fred Ward to its event driven team, in order to further hone the firm’s consultancy skills for the buy-side community. Fred joins from Magnetar Capital, where he headed up its European equities event portfolio, and his responsibilities at Olivetree will be to advise both long-fund and hedge-fund clients on how to navigate tough-to-model special situations. He is based in London and will work across Olivetree’s clients globally.

As the pace of regulatory change continues to increase, market participants remain under pressure to modify their businesses and respond to the regulatory demands. Having launched in a post-crisis environment, Olivetree was established to help facilitate the changing needs of the market and assist its customers in staying ahead of the curve. Today, the buy-side needs specialist sell-side providers and Olivetree’s focus on technological solutions coupled with analysis of special situations that aren’t trading on traditional valuation metrics, means the firm is well-positioned to help its customers respond to regulatory advancements.

To further validate the new sell-side model and continue to remain at the forefront of the changing regulatory backdrop, Olivetree welcomes Fred, who brings more than 17 years’ experience as both an investor and adviser in European corporate events. He joins Olivetree after eight years as a portfolio manager in European event strategies, firstly at Stark Investments and most recently at Magnetar Capital, where he ran the European equities event portfolio. Prior to his time in the hedge fund industry, Fred was an investment banker advising on mergers and acquisitions and corporate finance in both the public and private arena. Fred is a qualified lawyer, having started his career at Freshfields Bruckhaus Derringer. He holds an MA in jurisprudence from Oxford University.

Mark Kelly, CEO of Olivetree said: “Bringing Fred on-board enables us to further hone our consultancy skills for the buy-side community, where we remain focused upon specialisms in a number of key areas where others’ models are unable to address; namely evidence based finance and expertise in difficult to model situations.  We continue to believe that the sell-side model of the future will look far more like a consultancy – our role is to help the buy-side become more self-sufficient in the ways the regulator is demanding.  By positioning the business as we are, we are able to be the consultant of choice when the buy-side needs specialist advice, whether that be via our best in class trading technologies or our abilities to analyse difficult to model situations.  Fred’s extensive experience as an adviser and investor enhances our ability to offer a truly differentiated product to our clients.”

“Olivetree’s market-leading event driven consultancy continues to grow at a rapid pace, and I am excited to be working with the Olivetree team to enable us to further penetrate non-traditional consumers of this product. Helping the long-fund community understand inherited situations which aren’t necessarily trading on traditional fundamental metrics remains a core goal of the Olivetree model,” added Fred Ward.

At a significant time of growth for the company, Olivetree continues to expand in 2015, having recently opened an office in Sydney. The firm offers global, 24 hour trading capabilities, as it develops into new geographies and new asset classes.

For more information about Olivetree Financial visit: http://www.olivetreeglobal.com/