PRI board member Carlisle joins HSBC Global Asset Management as Head of RI

Principles for Responsible Investment board member Sandra Carlisle has left Newton Investment Management to join HSBC Global Asset Management as Head of Responsible Investment, RI understands.

Carlisle was the ‘activist’ candidate to the PRI board who represented a group of major asset managers that claimed the PRI had ‘lost its way’ – though she later acknowledged the positive changes in governance at the body.

She beat Masuru Arai, the former Daiwa CIO, to the single open asset manager slot at the PRI’s board in an election in 2015.

An official announcement of her move to HSBC is expected shortly; her LinkedIn account already displays her new role.

At Newton she was head of RI and led the EMEA branch of the Social Finance Advisory Group of parent BNY Mellon. Before that she was a director at F&C
Investments and had stints at PR firm Brunswick and Citigroup.The PRI says she will need former employer Newton’s approval to continue her three-year term on the PRI board. Newton would not comment on whether it intends to approve this – though the PRI told Responsible Investor that a situation in which a firm withheld permission for a previous employee to serve on its board has not occurred.

She will be succeeded at Newton by Rob Stewart, Portfolio Manager for Newton’s SRI Fund for Charities.

Stewart, who has been with Newton for 14 years, will lead a team of three: Ian Burger, Head of Corporate Governance; and Responsible Investment Analysts Freddie Woolfe and Victoria Barron.

Carlisle’s departure from Newton comes less than a year after Helena Morrissey, the high-profile founder of the 30% Club and Chair of the Investment Association, stepped down as the firm’s CEO. Morrissey was succeeded by Hanneke Smits, former Chief Investment Officer of private equity firm Adams Street Partners.