ARK Invest Europe has appointed Carl Henrik Hagerup as head of Northern European sales and promoted Paul Spells to head of UK sales.

Hagerup (pictured) joins from 21Shares as managing director and head of Netherlands and Nordics.

Prior to this, he led the institutional and wholesale client coverage across the Nordic region for State Street Global Advisors.

Hagerup also previously held key positions at Intercontinental Exchange and Bloomberg.

Spells joined ARK Invest Europe in May as director of northern European sales from Circa5000.

Commenting on the appointment, Stuart Forbes, head of Ark Invest, said: "Carl’s hire is significant in taking our European footprint to the next level.

“His long term experience in forging deep relationships across the region will be critical to our European growth plans and bringing our disruptive innovation and sustainability and impact investment solutions to a wider audience.”

Hagerup added: “ARK Invest has a highly attractive suite of innovative thematic ETFs that is tailored to the European market with both an active suite of disruptive technology ETFs.”

Following its acquisition of thematic specialist Rize ETF last year, ARK Invest Europe launched three active ETFs in April, covering innovation, genomics and artificial intelligence.

Elsewhere, ARK Invest Europe partnered with trading and investing platform eToro to launch a ‘smart’ portfolio of ETFs covering technology and innovation.