RI People & Appointments, April 22: ex-World Bank official to chair South Africa’s GEPF

Dr Renosi Mokate, former Executive Director of the World Bank Group and a former Deputy Governor of the South African Reserve Bank, has been elected as the new chair of the Board of Trustees of South Africa’s R1.2trn (€82bn) Government Employees’ Pension Fund (GEPF), succeeding Arthur Moloto. Mokate, who was recently named as CEO of the University of South Africa’s Graduate School of Business Leadership, has held numerous roles in the public sector and academia. It comes as a Bloomberg News report said suspended GEPF Principal Executive Officer John Oliphant has disputed the findings of a report by auditors PwC that he acted irregularly over the award of an advertising contract. Oliphant tweeted: “The PwC report plus my response to it must be made public! Transparency is important!”

Institutional Shareholder Services, the proxy firm, has made some appointments in its UK research team in London. They include Jocelyn Brown, the former Corporate Governance Adviser at UK watchdog the Financial Reporting Council. Before joining ISS she was Global Operational and Compliance Risk Manager at Shell. Other recent hires include Rebeca Coriat from Governance for Owners, Rachit Gupta from Manifest and Pauline Lecoursonnois from Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS).

Crawford Gillies has been named to succeed Sir John Sunderland as chairman of the Board Remuneration Committee at Barclays Bank. Gillies is a former Managing Director Europe at consulting firm Bain & Co. He is currently Chairman of Scottish Enterprise and he is a former Chairman of the Confederation of British Industry in London.

David Rix has been named as interim chief executive of BP Pension Trustee Ltd., according to a report on IPE.com. Rix, the fund’s chief risk officer since 2010, replaces Sally Bridgeland in the role. Rix was formerly treasurer of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan Pipeline Company, in which BP was a shareholder. He joined BP in 1988 after 10 years with Bank of America.Tom Kiely, who retired as Director of Sustainability at McKinsey & Co. in January 2013, has joined the Steering Committee of the Global Initiative for Sustainability Ratings (GISR), the body promoting a standard for corporate sustainability ratings and rankings. New members of GISR’s Technical Review Committee include Sabine Dorf, Manager of Financial Sustainability Relations at Bayer AG, Bernhard Schwager, who heads the Sustainability Office at Robert Bosch GmbH and Kristen Sullivan, the Deloitte Partner who leads its Sustainability Reporting, Assurance and Compliance services. Researchers Dominique Diouf and El Mostafa Jamea join the Expert Advisors Council. Link

Kurt Schacht, managing director of the CFA Institute’s Standards and Financial Market Integrity division, has been elected to chair the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s Investor Advisory Committee with immediate effect. He takes over at the 21-member body following the death recently of previous chair, CalPERS’ Chief Investment Officer Joseph Dear. The CFA is the global investment credentials body.

Assaad Razzouk and Andrew Affleck will co-chair the new Asia regional chapter of the Climate Markets & Investment Association (CMIA). Razzouk is CEO of Singapore-based Sindicatum Sustainable Resources while Affleck is managing partner at Armstrong Asset Management. The new group will engage with regional policy makers in Asia generally, but principally in Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia, China, India and Vietnam.

Sian Hansen has resigned as a non-executive director of Ludgate Environmental Fund Ltd., the AIM-listed investment company focused on companies within the environmental/cleantech sector, to focus on other business interests. Hansen, who took the role in 2009, is currently Chief Operating Officer at UK think tank the Legatum Institute. Announcement