People & Appointments: Senior RI appointments at big UK pension funds

Michael Marshall and Caroline Escott are joining RPMI Railpen, which runs UK railway pension assets. Marshall, who joins from LGPS Central, where he had been Director of Responsible Investment & Engagement, will be head of Head of Sustainable Ownership. Escott, the former Head of Policy at UKSIF, joins as Senior Investment Manager. She is currently Senior Policy Lead on Investment & Stewardship at the Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association. Link

BT Pension Scheme Management has appointed Victoria Barron as Head of Sustainable Investment. Barron will lead the scheme’s ongoing development and integration of stewardship and ESG work; she joins from Newton Investment Management, where she was a Responsible Investment Analyst.

Rathbone Greenbank Investments has made two hires for its ethical, sustainable and impact investment team. Sophie Lawrence joins as a senior researcher; she was formerly at Barclays Bank and most recently at KKS Advisors. David Nicholsby joins as an investment manager specialising in managing ethical portfolios on behalf of private clients, trusts and charities. He previously worked as an analyst at Courtiers Asset Management.

Rebecca Craddock-Taylor has been named  director of sustainable investment, a new role, at alternatives firm Gresham House. She joins from Univest where she was an ESG strategist; before that she was at consulting firm Hymans Robertson.

Gresham House's British Strategic Investment Fund (BSIF) has hired sustainability infrastructure expert, Peter Bachmann, as a fund manager for the strategy. Bachmann joins from European venture capital firm, Scottish Equity Partners, where he managed the Environmental Capital Fund. 

Aegon Asset Management has announced the promotion of Miranda Beacham, and the hiring of Georgina Laird and Retno Kusumaningtyas to its Responsible Investment Team.  In her new position, based in Edinburgh, as Senior Responsible Investment Manager, Beacham will oversee UK stewardship activities. Also based in Edinburgh, Laird has joined as a Sustainable Investment Analyst from Australia-based Uniting Ethical Investors, where she was ethics and impact manager. Finally, based in The Hague, Kusumaningtyas will work as Senior Responsible Investment Associate; she joins from consultancy firm, Profundo Research and Advice.

The former CEO of the Church Commissioners for England, Andrew Brown, has been nominated to the trustee board of the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS). Brown was nominated by University and College Union and will join in August. Currently, Brown is the Chair of William Leech Investments and Foundation Trusts.

Metzler Asset Management, the German house with a strong ESG focus, has appointed Nedialko Nedialkov as its Equity Fund Manager. His new role is part of the German firm’s moves to grow its equity expertise; he will be part of the European small-cap and German equity team managed by Lorenzo Carcano. Nedialkov’s career began as a portfolio manager at Union Investment, where he oversaw European equity strategies and specialised in consumer-focused sectors for nine years.

Paul Simondon has been named as Deputy Mayor to the City of Paris in charge of finance, budget, and green finance. 

IP Group plc, which develops intellectual property-based businesses, has appointed Professor Gordon Clark, Senior Consultant and Emeritus Professor of the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment at Oxford University, as Chair of its Ethics Committee.

Matti Leppäla, the CEO of industry body PensionsEurope, has begun another term as a member of the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Stakeholder Group – a body convened by EU supervisor the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority. Leppäla was a member of the EU High Level Expert Group on Sustainable Finance, which advised the European Commission on its green finance agenda.