RI People & Appointments, June 12: ISS names Aviva Investors’ Leclercq as Head of UK Research

Nathan Leclercq, Head of Corporate Governance at Aviva Investors, will be joining proxy firm Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) as Head of UK Research based in London. ISS said he would have a client-facing and public role, managing the team’s dialogue with UK companies in accordance with the ISS Compliance Statement against the U.K. Stewardship Code. At Aviva, he represented Aviva Investors on the Investment Association’s Remuneration and Share Schemes Committee, the Shareholder Voting Working Group and the vote confirmation group at the Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI). “We are delighted to be welcoming Nathan,” said Georgina Marshall, ISS’s Global Head of Research – who herself joined from Aviva Investors in 2012. Leclerc will report to Catherine Salmon, Executive Director, Head of Research for UK, France, Middle East and Africa. The team includes senior UK analysts Rachit Gupta and Jonathan Haymon and Thérèse Kieve who recently joined from ShareAction.

Sustainable finance specialist Cecilia Repinski, formerly at GES Investment Services, has launched Stockholm Green Digital Finance, a Sweden based independent green digital finance platform. Repinski, who has also been named on the Board of Directors at ESG association SweSif, was most recently Platform Director, Sustainable Finance at the Mistra Center for Sustainable Markets, a Stockholm School of Economics’ sustainability focused research centre.

The Brunel Pension Partnership (BPP), a collaboration of UK public pension schemes, is recruiting for four senior executive roles, including that of chief executive. It is also recruiting for a chief investment officer, chief compliance and risk officer, and chief operations officer. It comes as the fund recently named Denise Le Gal as independent chair and as Brunel plans to pool £25bn (€28.7bn) of assets from the 10 founder pension funds. They are the funds for Avon, Buckinghamshire, Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, the Environment Agency, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire, Somerset, and Wiltshire. The Environment Agency’s Chief Pensions Officer Dawn Turner is currently Brunel’s interim managing director.

The World Resources Institute, the Washington-based think tank, has named Christina Chan as the new Director of the Climate Resilience Practice. She will oversee the WRI’s efforts to empower vulnerable communities and strengthen their resilience to climate impacts across the developing world. She was most recently at the US Department of State, where she was involved in the Paris Agreement.Anja Mikus, CIO at quant ESG house Arabesque, has been seconded for six months to become the interim CEO and CIO of the German government’s €23.6bn nuclear phase-out fund, according to a news release. The German federal parliament approved a bill last December to transfer liabilities for storing nuclear waste to the state. Mikus, who joined Arabesque in 2014, is a former CIO at Union Investment and is a Member of the Supervisory Board at Commerzbank. Arabesque CEO Omar Selim said: “We wish her every success as she embarks on what is an important project for Germany’s transition to clean energy.”

The new board of the combined asset management businesses NN Investment Partners (NN IP), the asset manager of NN Group, and Delta Lloyd Asset Management (DL AM), has been announced. Satish Bapat, who was appointed CEO of NN IP as of April 1, will lead the Board which will consist of the following: Chief Investment Officer (CIO): Valentijn van Nieuwenhuijzen; Chief Client Officer (CCO): Hester Borrie; Chief Finance and Risk Officer (CFRO): Martijn Canisius; Chief Human Relations Officer (CHRO): To be confirmed.

Jan Vapaavuori has resigned as Vice President of the European Investment Bank (EIB) following his election as Mayor of Helsinki. He took up the post in September 2015 and part of his remit included Corporate Social Responsibility.

Jo Ann Barefoot has become chair of the Center for Financial Services Innovation (CFSI), which focuses on consumer financial health in the US. Adrienne Harris, Ben Mangan, and Judith Samuelson have joined the board. Link

Andreas Hoepner, Associate Professor of Finance at the ICMA Centre of Henley Business School, has joined Smurfit Graduate Business School as Professor of Operational Risk, Banking & Finance. The UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School is the graduate business school of University College Dublin. Hoepner was also formerly Senior Academic Fellow with the UN-supported Principles for Responsible Investment.

The Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations (IDDRI) is seeking a Director for its Climate Change Programme. The role is based in Paris and requires a minimum of 10 years’ experience in the field of climate change policy and governance.