BlackRock appoints Barry Knapp to lead Thematic Strategies team

(Reuters) – BlackRock Inc, the world’s largest money manager, has hired Barry Knapp from Barclays to head its newly formed Thematic Strategies team, according to an internal memo seen by Reuters on Tuesday.

Knapp, who will join BlackRock’s New York office this summer, will report to Rick Rieder, CIO of Fundamental Fixed Income and co-head of Americas Fixed Income, a BlackRock spokeswoman said.

A Barclays spokeswoman confirmed the move.

The Thematic Strategies team, which is part of the firm’s Americas Fixed Income team, will be responsible for identifying scalable sources of alpha, to be used by the portfolio management teams in the fixed-income platform.

Before joining BlackRock, Knapp was the head of U.S. Equity Portfolio Strategy with Barclays for five years. Prior to that, he was with Lehman Brothers for 19 years in a variety of roles including head of US Portfolio Strategy.

(Corrects paragraph one to say that BlackRock is the world’s largest money manager, not the world’s largest listed alternative asset manager)

(Reporting by Avik Das in Bangalore)