Steven Rothmeier, former NWA Inc. chairman, will...

Steven Rothmeier, former NWA Inc. chairman, will become president of Investment Adviser Inc.’s IAI Capital Group on Nov. 20. In addition to managing the firm’s existing $125-million venture capital portfolio, Rothmeier said he would start a merchant banking operation and lead Investment Advisers into mergers and acquisitions. Investment Advisers, owned by the Hill Samuel Group of Britain, manages NWA’s pension fund.

Rothmeier, 43, left the parent of Northwest Airlines in September after a group led by Los Angeles investor Alfred A. Checchi completed a buyout of NWA in August and had expected Rothmeier to stay on through a transition period of several months.

In his first public comments on the departure, Rothmeier said Wednesday that he and others left NWA because they had “really accomplished what we wanted to do.” The fact that he had to report directly to Checchi “was not significant.”