Responsible Investor

RI global round-up 15/01/08

RI’s bite-sized round-up of the week’s main responsible investment stories.

Mercer, the investment consultant, has thrown significant weight behind responsible investment (RI) with a raft of new hires to its dedicated team. In December, Responsible Investor revealed the consultant was set to boost its specialist global responsible investment team. Mercer launched the specialist business unit in 2004. Its staff is mostly spread between New York, Toronto, London, Tokyo and Melbourne. Under the recruitment drive, Jordan Berger, former supervisor of strategic planning, policy development and benefits at the Ontario Public Service Employees Union, has been named head of responsible investment for Canada; a new position. In Australia, Xinting Jia, a former management consultant who co-founded the Centre for International Corporate Governance Research/Business and Law at Victoria University, has joined Mercer’s Asia Pacific responsible investment team as an Associate, based in Melbourne. In Tokyo, Megumi Terayama joins as a senior consultant. Megumi worked in the corporate risk management consultancy services at KPMG Business Assurance. The Responsible Investment team has also hired Kelly Gauthier, a former management consultant who previously worked for CARE Enterprise Partners in social venture capital, as an associate in Toronto. In London, it has hired Susanna Jacobson as a sustainable research analyst. Jacobson previously worked with Innovest and SustainAbility. In Stockholm, Eric Gelfgren, former global head of marketing & sales at Sustainable Asset Management (SAM), joins Mercer as a principal in

the RI team. Jane Ambachtsheer, global head of responsible investment at Mercer: “This growth reflects the extent to which responsible investment is evolving – from a niche area to one of our core lines of business. This is due to an increasing number of institutional investors around the world seeking advice on how to better incorporate environmental, social and governance factors into their investment processes.”
Pirc, the UK corporate governance group, has hit out at the 2007 pay of directors at Aberdeen Asset Management, including chief executive Martin Gilbert, who was paid a bonus of 656% of salary last year. Pirc has recommended that shareholders vote against the remuneration report at Aberdeen’s annual general meeting on January 17th.
Aberdeen’s annual report shows that Gilbert was paid £400,000 in 2007 while his bonus stood at £2.625m.
Pirc said: “Combined incentive awards granted during the year were excessive in our view. We would welcome further disclosure on relative ranking for earnings per share performance targets under the long-term incentive scheme. We recommend that shareholders vote against the remuneration report.”
The Aberdeen annual report states that Gilbert’s bonus was paid in line with set targets including managing costs, improving profit and operating margins, and retaining important clients and staff.
Railpen Investments, one of the UK’s largest pension fund investors, has increased corporate governance

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