RI People & Appointments, March 21: Hewson Baltzell, Sparinvest, FTSE, Environmental Defense Fund

Hewson Baltzell, the former Executive Director, Head of Product Development of ESG Research at MSCI, is now President & Chief Operating Officer at HELiOS Exchange, a new firm which has developed a software platform focused on energy efficiency retrofits in commercial buildings. He told RI he is the original angel investor in HELiOS, which was founded by Pierre Trevet and Will Gayton, both formerly with Innovest Strategic Value Advisors, the pioneering ESG firm where he was President and Chief Operating Officer. “We are taking advantage of the increasing amount of energy performance data that is being made public by cities such as New York and San Francisco” he said. Link

Sparinvest S.A., the fund firm backed by a number of leading Danish investors that has a strong RI stance, has appointed Jørgen F. Søgaard Andersen as new Managing Director and CIO. He was formerly Director and Head of Market Trading Risk at Nordea Bank Denmark, and has previously been Director and Chief Risk Officer with ATP Alpha.

Jacqueline Hunt will take over as Chief Executive of Allianz’s asset management division (AAM) this September, replacing Jay Ralph who’s resigning to spend more time with his family. Ralph had been CEO of AAM, which includes California-based fixed income giant PIMCO and Allianz Global Investors (AGI) in Munich, since 2002. Hunt takes over as the Allianz group implements a new sustainable strategy, including integrating ESG (environmental, social and governance) criteria over a €630bn portfolio and divesting from the coal sector. Prior to joining Allianz, Hunt was Head of Prudential’s UK business.

Johan van der Ende, the former chief investment officer at Dutch pensions giant PGGM, has been appointed to the supervisory board at fiduciary manager MN, IPE reports. Michaël Kortbeek, board member at €60bn metal scheme PMT – MN’s largest client and shareholder – also joins the board.

Dalila Wilson-Scott has been named Senior Vice President of Community Investment and President of the Comcast Foundation. She joins the US-based media and technology company from JPMorgan, where she was Head of Global Philanthropy and President of the JPMorgan Chase Foundation. Announcement

Class action law firm Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll has announced that Judge Martha Geer of the North Carolina Court of Appeals will join the firm in May as a partner and head of the firm’s new North Carolina office. She will litigate cases across the firm’s many practice areas, including Ethics and Fiduciary Counseling (including advice to pension funds, law firms, and governmental entities).

Sir Partha Dasgupta, Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of Cambridge, has been awarded the 2016 Tyler Prize for developing economic theory and tools to measure the relationships between human and environmental wellbeing, poverty, population, economic growth and the state of natural resources. Dasgupta co-chaired the committee that advised Pope Francis on the scientific basis of climate change and helped shape the Sustainable Development Goals, the citation said.Mark Makepeace, group director of information services at the London Stock Exchange Group and chief executive of the FTSE Group, is one of eight new commissioners tasked with unlocking billions in untouched financial assets for good causes. The names, announced by Nick O’Donohoe, chair of the UK government-backed Dormant Assets Commission, include Richard Collier-Keywood (PwC); Kirsty Cooper (Aviva); Gurpreet Dehal (ex-Credit Suisse); Rachel Hanger (KPMG); Jackie Hunt (CityUK); Susan Sternglass Noble (senior adviser, Investor Forum); and Martin Turner (Lloyds Banking Group). Big Society Capital, where O’Donohoe – who is moving to the Gates Foundation – was founding CEO, was partly set up with dormant accounts in 2012.

Baroness Bryony Worthington has joined Environmental Defense Fund Europe as its new Executive Director. She is the first to hold this position for the European affiliate of the international nonprofit organization. Worthington , who as a civil servant helped to draft the UK Climate Change Act 2008, was appointed a member of the House of Lords in 2010 and was a Shadow Minister for the Department of Energy and Climate Change, stepping down in late 2015.

Tina Fordham, Citi’s first chief global political analyst, has been named as a member of the newly announced UN High-Level Panel on Women’s Economic Empowerment which intends to put women’s economic empowerment at the top of the international agenda. The panel is co-chaired by Simona Scarpaleggia, CEO of IKEA Switzerland and President Luis Solís of Costa Rica. Managing Director of the IMF, Christine Lagarde is also a panel member.

Actress Michelle Yeoh has been named as a Goodwill Ambassador by the United Nations Development Programme to support the recently launched Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Matthieu Duncan has been named as the new CEO of Natixis Asset Management, effective April 4. Duncan replaces Pascal Voisin, who has led the French asset manager since 2005. A US and French citizen, Duncan has held several senior positions in asset management, including Head of Business Strategy at Newton Investment Management.

Holger Naumann has been named Chief Executive of the German unit within Deutsche Bank’s asset management (AM) division, reporting to Qintin Price, CEO of Deutsche’s asset management division. Naumann is also the current President of German fund industry association BVI. Deutsche also said that along with Naumann, Matthias Liermann and Thorsten Michalik were now part of the German unit’s seven-member management team. The other members of the team are Barbara Rupf Bee, Reinhard Bellet, Henning Gebhardt und Stefan Kreuzkamp.

Isabel Liu has been named as a non-executive director of the Pensions Infrastructure Platform (PiP), the UK pension fund-backed infrastructure initiative. She has 20 years’ experience investing in infrastructure, with stints at the AIG Asian Infrastructure Fund and the ABN AMRO Global Infrastructure Fund. Link