RI People & Appointments, July 15: European Parliament, Baloise Asset Management, Goldman Sachs, OTPP, Osmosis

Pascal Canfin will be the Chair of the European Parliament’s Environment, Public Health and Food Safety Committee Committee (known as ENVI) for the next two and a half years. Canfin was head of WWF in France before joining President Macron’s list of candidates for the European elections. They will be under the new political group, Renew, which replaces ALDE, the European political party for liberal democrats. Canfin’s previous roles include Senior Advisor on Climate at World Resources Institute, Minister for Development under François Hollande’s presidency and MEP with Europe Ecology – The Greens from 2009 to 2012. Link

Agnes Neher has started a new role as Senior Responsible Investment Manager at Baloise Asset Management where she will oversee the development of its RI strategy. Neher joins from Swiss private bank J Safra Sarasin. She lectures at Duale Hochschule on the topic of sustainable finance.

Gerald Cartigny, the CIO of Dutch asset manager MN and Vice Chair of the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change (IIGCC), is to join Goldman Sachs Asset Management as Managing Director and Head of its Belgium, Netherlands, and Luxembourg client business. MN, which manages €130bn of assets, is the asset manager for metal industry pension funds PMT and PME.

Jo Taylor has been appointed President and CEO of the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan (OTPP), succeeding Ron Mock who is due to step down at the end of the year. Taylor is the current Executive Managing Director of Global Development.

Amara Goeree has been appointed Global Head of ESG Product at Bermuda-based fund administrator Apex Group. She was previously at Swiss private bank Julius Baer.

Lisa Harrison has been named Head of Marketing at Osmosis Investment Management, the sustainability specialist that is 20%-owned by the Oxford University endowment. She previously held roles at Legal & General Investment Management, Aviva and most recently BlackRock Asset Management. Anthony Chisnall and Susan Hunnisett become Product Distribution Manager and Investor Relations officer respectively.Pablo Berrutti has transferred to the Sustainable Funds Group which is managed by Stewart Investors, a long-term investment specialist under Colonial First State Global Asset Management (CFSGAM). Berrutti formerly served as Head of Responsible Investment , Asia-Pacific, at FSGAM and recently founded Altiorem, a sustainable finance hub start-up.

Katie Costello has announced on LinkedIn that she is retiring as Managing Director of Governance Matters, the non-executive corporate consultancy which she founded and sold in 2017, although she says will continue with other directorships.

Stephanie Bilo has been named Chief Client & Investment Solutions of ResponsAbility, the Zurich-based impact specialist with $3bn in assets under management that sold a stake to Australian superannuation fund Christian Super. Bilo formerly worked for Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan and UBS, and most recently oversaw all investor-focused activities at ResponsAbility.

Mellody Hobson has been promoted to the co-CEO position of Chicago-based minority-owned asset manager Ariel Investments where she will share joint responsibilities with Founder, Chairman and CEO John Rogers. Hobson has served as President of the small-cap specialists for 19 years prior to the appointment.

Simon Dingemans, the former CFO of GlaxoSmithKline, has been named the UK government’s preferred candidate to chair audit regulator the Financial Reporting Council (FRC). Ministers now await the publication of a report by a parliamentary select committee on the candidate’s suitability. Former Schroders and Citi executive Sir Winfried Bischoff is the outgoing Chair.

Roelfien Kuijpers, Global Head of Strategic Relationships and Head of Responsible Investment at DWS, the Germany-based fund manager, will have her role expanded to include overall responsibility for the UK and Nordic regions in addition to the asset manager’s Brexit strategy. These areas were previously under the purview Maria Ryan who will exit DWS at the end of the month. Read RI’s 2018 profile of Kuijpers here.