ETF Guru Deborah Fuhr to Join BofA After Quitting BlackRock

(August 12, 2011) — Deborah Fuhr, the former head of exchange traded fund research at US asset manager BlackRock, is reportedly joining Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BAML) in London as head of its Global Delta One Strategy.

Fuhr — who is almost universally regarded as the industry leader within the ETF space — joined BlackRock in 2008 after leaving Morgan Stanley, where she worked as a managing director.

Fuhr’s role will include the marketing of exchange-traded equity futures and other equity derivatives within Bank of America’s Delta One business, according to media reports. She will report to Piers Butler, head of European Middle East and African division covering global equities, macro and events. She is scheduled to start work at the bank in mid-October.

The ETF head left BlackRock last month. Following her announced departure, the firm said in a statement that BlackRock plans to centralize all its ETF-related research in a new unit, known as the BlackRock Investment Institute. The institute will now be led by Lee Kempler, who joined the firm in April after serving as a director at consultant McKinsey.

In an e-mail, BlackRock spokeswoman Caroline Hancock confirmed that BlackRock’s ETF research will be “provided by the new BlackRock Investment Institute.” Additionally, the firm will be dedicating additional resources to expand its independent ETF coverage, Hancock asserted. While Fuhr will not be directly replaced, Russ Koesterich, global chief investment strategist for the firm’s iShares platform and a member of the BlackRock Investment Institute, will head the firm’s ETF research agenda.

“It’s been exciting to watch,” Fuhr told aiCIO, when asked last year about the growth of ETFs in the United States since she came onto the scene in 1997. “It’s transparent — on a daily basis — and a product I’ve always felt confident in. I could always go home and sleep at night knowing I was buying a product that was simple and did what it said it was going to do.”