RI People & Appointments, Sept. 18: the latest ESG hires and departures

Anne Kvam, Principal Consultant, Sustainability at global risk management advisor, Det Norske Veritas, has been appointed Head of Responsible Investment at Norwegian mutual insurer and asset manager KLP. Kvam, formerly Global Head of Ownership Policy at Norges Bank Investment Management, steps into the role left vacant by Jeanett Bergan’s move to PwC Norway in March. She will take up her new role in October, taking over from interim head Annie Bersagel.

Laura Pool, Managing Director, Risk and Finance at impact investor Triodos Investment Management, has been hired as Chief Risk Officer at Dutch social investor Oikocredit. Pool, who also sat on the management board at Triodos, was previously Chief Financial Officer and Chief Risk Officer at Dutch insurance company Nationale Borg, following several roles with ING Group. She will take up her new role on 18 December 2017.

Claudia Mortimore has been named Interim Executive Counsel and Director of Enforcement at the Financial Reporting Council (FRC), following the resignation of Gareth Rees QC at the UK’s accounting standards regulatory body. Mortimore, a former prosecutor at both the Revenue and Customs Prosecutions Office (RCPO) and the Department for Business before joining the FRC in 2013, will take up her new role from 1 November 2017. The FRC is the independent body responsible for the UK Corporate Governance and Stewardship Codes.

Frédéric Jamet, Head of Investments at State Street Global Advisors France, has been named Managing Director, Head of Trading and co-Head of Research at France’s “anti-benchmark asset manager” Tobam. He will assume responsibility for the $8.5bn asset manager’s trading and research departments. Jamet, an expert in factor and smart beta investment, is also a member of pan-European exchange, Euronext’s Index Advisory Group.

The Brunel Pension Partnership (BPP), the new £28bn investment firm created by the Brunel Pension Partnership Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS), is looking to hire a Head of Private Markets “to design, develop, implement, and manage our private markets investments”. BPP is one of eight national pooled funds, and will oversee the investment of the pension assets for the Avon, Buckinghamshire. Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, Environment Agency, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire, Somerset, and Wiltshire Funds. The UK’s 89 local government pension funds are in the process of pooling their assets that will be managed by eight different investment pools.

Green bond specialist Ben Powell, Head of Funding at the IFC, the private sector arm of the World Bank Group, has joined Sweden’s SEB to lead its climate and sustainable finance efforts in Norway. Powell, who mainstreamed the IFC’s Green and Social Bond programs, will now bring his expertise to the Nordic banking group where it will inform SEB’s renewable energy and infrastructure initiatives across the bank. He takes up his new role in October.Professor John Ruggie, Harvard academic and author of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, has been welcomed to the Board of Arabesque Asset Management by its Chairman Georg Kell, former Head of the UN Global Compact. Ruggie’s appointment as Director is one of three at the UK based ESG specialist quant firm, he has been named alongside Carolyn Woo, former CEO and President of Catholic Relief Services, and Yolanda Kakabadse, President of WWF International.

Magdalena Håkansson has joined MSCI ESG Research LLC. as an ESG Consultant and Vice President covering Sweden, Denmark and Finland. Magdalena has more than 15 years’ experience in financial services. Prior to MSCI, Ms. Håkansson was Head of Client Relations, Nordic Region at GES International in Stockholm where she was advising large institutional investors in the Nordic region on active ownership and responsible investments. Previous to GES, Magdalena worked at SEB and Goldman Sachs in London.

Natasha Landell-Mills, Head of Stewardship at Sarasin, has reportedly been promoted to Partner at the UK based fund manager. Landell-Mills, a former Senior Analyst at the UK-based Universities Superannuation Scheme Investment Management, is currently a member of the International Corporate Governance Network’s accounting and auditing committee, the UK’s Corporate Reporting and Auditing Group, and the Asian Corporate Governance sub-group on Japan.

ESG specialist Sophia Tickell has been appointed Non-Executive Director at Lionstrust, as the London-listed fund manager targets sustainability as an “area of focus and expansion”. Adrian Collins, Chairman of Liontrust, said: “Sophia will…add vast knowledge and insight to the Board through her work and involvement with ESG… [t]his is a key area of focus and expansion for Liontrust following the completion of our acquisition of Alliance Trust Investments in April 2017 and given our belief in the growing importance of sustainability for consumers and investors”. Tickell is a Founding Partner of energy, climate change and finance think-tank Meteos, and was involved in the creation of UK banking reform initiative BankingFutures. She will take up the role from October 2017.

Dutch NGO Access to Medicine Foundation, the pharmaceutical lobbying group, is recruiting an Investor Engagement Manager to oversee its interactions with investors. The foundation aims to mobilise the pharmaceutical industry to address the 2 billion people worldwide without access to medicine.