RI People & Appointments, Oct. 19: Hedge fund group Mariner’s CEO takes impact investment role

Bracebridge Young is stepping down as CEO of Mariner Investment Group, the $13.5bn US alternative investment firm that is majority owned by Japan’s ORIX conglomerate, to become CEO at GATE Global Impact, an online social and environmental investment marketplace. He will remain a member of Mariner’s Board of Managers and chair Mariner’s new Impact Investing Advisory Committee, assisting the firm to develop ESG-related product offerings, consistent with its membership of the Principles for Responsible Investment. Young said: “Impact investing has been a passion of mine for some time, and I have been delighted to advance the cause at Mariner as well as in my work with Social Finance US.” Announcement

Malcolm Gray, formerly Global Head of ESG at Investec Asset Management, has joined Standards & Legal, the Cape Town-based ESG management standard and legal compliance consultancy, as a non-executive director. Gray will be working on the firm’s expansion plans, including for its software engine Libryo. Gray, who was part of the working group that drafted the pioneering Regulation 28 to the Pension Funds Act of South Africa, has invested in Standards & Legal’s parent firm SustainEnable (Pty) Ltd.

Antonios Panagiotopoulos has joined MSCI ESG Research as a Senior Associate in the London team focused primarily on the energy industry. He was previously a research analyst at Navig8 Europe, an economics and strategy analyst at KBC Advanced Technologies and Markets Editor at McGraw Hill-Platts.

Mats Andersson, chief executive at the SEK310bn (€33bn) Swedish pension fund AP4 and former Chief Investment Officer at Skandia Liv, has been ranked fourth on a Public Investor 100 list compiled by the Sovereign Wealth Fund Institute. It’s due to his advocacy in acknowledging carbon as risk to portfolios, addressing this in AP4’s portfolios through lowering exposure to companies with high carbon footprints. Link

The European Parliament has voted in favour of appointing Wilhelm Molterer as Managing Director of the new European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI). He’s a former Vice-President of the EIB (2011-2015), where he was responsible, among other things, for cohesion and for advisory services. Before joining the EIB, he was a Member of the Austrian Parliament. He has been Vice Chancellor and Finance Minister of Austria and chairman of the Austrian People’s Party. Iliyana Tsanova, Deputy Prime Minister in two separate caretaker governments of Bulgaria, will be Deputy Managing Director. The Managing Director and Deputy will coordinate EFSI activities within the EIB Group and support EFSI Investment Committee meetings, which the Managing Director will chair. Announcement

Amy Falls, chief investment officer of the Rockefeller University, has joined the board of the $37bn Harvard University endowment, according to a Bloomberg News report.German ESG research firm Imug has hired two new analysts. Kirsten Hahn will score the sustainability of companies while Stefanie Schreiber will assess bonds issued by banks. Hahn has worked for the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) and authored several essays on dealing with climate change. Schreiber has a degree in International Management and Finance from Humboldt University in Berlin.

Andrew Michelmore, CEO of MMG Ltd., the Australia-based, Hong Kong-listed mining firm, has been appointed Chair of the International Council on Mining and Metals (ICMM), the extractives industry body founded in 2001. He takes over the role from Mark Cutifani, CEO of Anglo American, after the completion of his two-year term. MMG, the former Minerals and Metals Group, has operations in Laos, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Australia, Peru and Canada.

Index and ESG firm MSCI has appointed Baer Pettit as Chief Operating Officer while Diana Tidd becomes Head of Equity Index Products worldwide. Pettit, a member of the firm’s Executive Committee, was most recently Global Head of Products, and will now head up the firm’s full product line (including ESG products). Tidd, formerly Head of Americas Index Products, will also join the Executive Committee and will report to Pettit. Announcement

Ellen Blix has joined Commonfund, the US investment manager focused on not-for-profit institutional investors, as a Managing Director in its sales team, based in San Francisco. She was previously a Vice President in the Global Client Group at Blackrock.

David Sumner has resigned as chairman of Auhua Clean Energy, the AIM-listed, China-based environmental technology group citing ““increasing demands on his time” – the shares slumped almost 18% on the news. Raphael Tham has been named Non-Executive Chairman in the interim. Announcement

Janet Cowell, State Treasurer for North Carolina and sole trustee of the $90bn North Carolina Retirement Systems pension fund, has announced that she will not stand for re-election in 2016. Cowell, who took office in 2009 and shortly after had to announce that the fund stood at $60bn after losing $17bn, has increased the retirement fund’s assets to $90bn during her term in office. She recently announced a corporate governance push at the fund.

Kees-Jan van de Kamp has joined the Infrastructure & Project Finance of NN Investment Partners, the former ING Investment Management. He joins from NIBC Bank, where he was responsible for Infrastructure & Renewables Debt Capital Markets.

Gottfried Hörich has been named as the new Chief Executive of Amundi’s German unit. He replaces Hubert Dänner, who left the Paris-based asset manager last July. Before departing, Dänner oversaw the roll-out of Amundi’s low carbon indices in Germany’s institutional market. Hörich joins Amundi from JP Morgan Asset Management (JPAM) in Frankfurt where he worked for ten years.