departure of investment chief Mr. Preston Hutchings.

Mr. Hutchings, who will join catastrophe insurer Mid Ocean Ltd. as chief investment officer and vice president on February 1, is leaving the bank after 14 months.

While at the bank, he was appointed managing director of Butterfield Asset Management, a new bank unit established only last year to capitalise on investment management within Bermuda and globally.

Bank president and chief operating officer, Mr. Michael Collier, said yesterday that the bank has already begun to hear from prospective applicants here and abroad, even before any official advertisement has been placed.

"Preston has served us well in that capacity,'' Mr. Collier said. "We do wish him well and we will find a suitable candidate to replace him.'' Mr.

Hutchings conceded some regrets at leaving. He said: "My regret is that we achieved a substantial amount in the last year. It is a dynamite group of people.

"I know there is more work to be done and I'm sorry to leave before the operation achieves its full potential. But it is heading in that direction.

I'm proud of what we have achieved so far.'' Mr. Hutchings had been at the bank for 14 months. The bank is moving quickly to fill the senior vacancy.

Mr. Collier said: "No-one likes to lose time on these things. People have been expressing interest (in the job) both locally and overseas.'' He expects to be inundated with applications, once the job is publicly advertised.

Mr. Collier added: "It's going to be a matter of going through them and sorting them out, which will take time.

"We have a number of contacts in the market that obviously know Bermuda well, know the bank well, know what Bermuda has to offer and what the bank is doing globally, so we don't find the position difficult to fill.

"We have an ad that we have put together, but we haven't publicised that ad yet. We will run it locally and, if necessary, overseas, if we can't find a Bermudian to fill the position.

"It was a good thing when we found Preston, because he is a Bermudian. But if we can't find a suitable Bermudian, we will have to look elsewhere.'' The Butterfield group of companies has assets under its administration in one form or another in excess of $13 billion in Bermuda, Cayman Islands, London, Guernsey and Hong Kong. The position requires direct or indirect input for the managing of different aspects of that portfolio.

Meanwhile, Mid Ocean Ltd., the owner of Mid Ocean Reinsurance Company Ltd., hired Mr. Hutchings after identifying a need to more actively manage their billion dollar portfolio of cash and investments.

The company has had a significant increase in money under management through growth and earnings of the company.

Vice president and treasurer, Mr. John Wadson, said, "The company has always taken a somewhat passive role by actually hiring top flight fixed income asset managers. We currently have four.

"However, given the size of the portfolio in aggregate, we some time ago identified the need for us to more actively manage those funds ourselves through increased dialogue with the existing managers.

"We have identified, and have had approved by the board of directors, a set of investment guidelines that are reviewed and updated regularly. They were in fact just changed this month after the most recent board meeting.

"However, it has been very clear to us in a very difficult bond market, that we will need to spend more time with these asset managers. We will be running some funds ourselves directly from the company, something that we have been doing for some time now.''