BlueMountain's Europe CEO Louisa Church Is Joining Och-Ziff

(Bloomberg) -- Louisa Church, BlueMountain Capital Management’s European operations chief, is leaving the firm to join Och-Ziff Capital Management Group LLC, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

Church is set to start at billionaire Dan Och’s publicly traded asset management firm in July as an executive managing director and head of investor relations for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, one of the people said. She will be based in London. Church joined BlueMountain in 2010 and took over as the sole head of the European business about two years ago.

“Louisa’s departure from BlueMountain is amicable and we wish her the best in her next endeavor,” BlueMountain said in a statement. “No decision has been made about the CEO of Europe role as Louisa will be with the firm until June 30.”

Rollo Wigan, who’s worked with Church over the last two years, will take over responsibility for managing part of BlueMountain’s investor relations, marketing and strategy effort for EMEA, according to the statement. Stephen Siderow, co-founder and co-president, will continue to manage the global team.

A representative for Och-Ziff, which had $31.5 billion in assets as of April 1, declined to comment.

Och-Ziff, which last month reported its first year of asset inflows since 2014, has also hired Jason Lewittes as a managing director to focus on investing in the health-care sector, according to the firm’s website. Lewittes, who is based in New York, joined from Citadel. He previously worked at Och-Ziff for four years until 2010.

--With assistance from Thomas Beardsworth.

To contact the reporter on this story: Nabila Ahmed in New York at nahmed54@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Elizabeth Fournier at efournier5@bloomberg.net, ;Margaret Collins at mcollins45@bloomberg.net, Melissa Karsh, Josh Friedman

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