State Street, which bought Bank of Ireland Asset Management for €57 million in 2011, is beefing up the unit, now called SSgA Ireland. Three new hires will be announced next week.

SSgA has plucked Bob Allen from Dermot Desmond's International Investment and Underwriting, where he was a technology boffin. His LinkedIn page says that while studying for his MBA he got a GMAT score of 780, which means he's basically some sort of genius.

Eoin Ó hÓgáin joins from the UK utility Centrica, a recent bidder for Bord Gáis Energy. Ó hÓgáin, who will cover global resources for SSgA, previously worked for McKinsey & Co and Morgan Stanley, so he is well used to mixing it with the pinstriped suits. The third hire is James Savage, who will cover the industrial and utilities sectors. He joins from Depfa, the German-owned IFSC bank that collapsed during the financial crisis, giving Angela Merkel the hump. Savage was brought in to Depfa in 2011 to help clean up.

I also hear the SSgA crew are cock-a-hoop because it won six awards recently at the Custody Risk European Awards in London. Someone described them to me as the “Oscars of the securities industry”. Maybe not as glamorous, though.