RI People & Appointments, September 22: Impax, Mercer, McKnight, Franklin Templeton, WWF

Meg Brown has joined Impax Asset Management, the UK-based environmental investment specialist, as an Associate Director, UK Business Development for the firm’s listed equity products. Brown has been working as an independent consultant since January 2013. Prior to this she was an analyst in sustainable and climate-related investment at Citi Investment Research. Harry Lambert has been appointed as an Associate Director, Fund Investor Relations Specialist in the Global Business Development team. He has worked at Pantheon Ventures, Hermes GPE and Coller Capital.

Jane Ambachtsheer, global head of consulting firm Mercer’s Responsible Investment business, has been recognised in the 2015 Clean50, an annual award which recognizes those who have done the most to advance the cause of sustainability and clean capitalism in Canada. Ambachtsheer established Mercer’s global Responsible Investment team in 2004.

Matthew Bell has been named as the new Chief Executive of the Committee on Climate Change (CCC), the body which advises the UK government. Bell, a director of consultancy Frontier Economics, takes over from David Kennedy who stepped down earlier this year. Announcement

Oliver Behrens, Board Executive at Germany’s DekaBank in charge of asset management, has decided to leave at the end of this month, the company has confirmed. Behrens joined Deka in January 2007. Deka, which is owned by German Sparkassen, or state-owned savings banks, has €208bn in assets under management and has been a signatory to the Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) since September 2012.

Ted Eliopoulos has been named as the new Chief Investment Officer of the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS). Eliopoulos, previously Senior Investment Officer (SIO) for Real Assets, had been acting in an interim capacity.

Stephen Zhifang Cai has resigned as CEO of China Sunergy, the Nasdaq-listed solar cell and module manufacturer, for “personal reasons”. Chairman, founder and former CEO Tingxiu Lu will rejoin the executive management team as CEO. Announcement

Former UK Climate Change Minister Greg Barker has been appointed as Prime Minister David Cameron’s climate change envoy. Barker was a minister from 2010 until this summer and quit ahead of a ministerial reshuffle. He was replaced in the role by Amber Rudd.Elizabeth McGeveran has been named Impact Investing Program Director, a new position at the $2bn McKnight Foundation. Beginning this September, McGeveran will manage program-related and mission-driven investments for the Foundation as part of McKnight’s commitment to channel an initial target of $200m into impact investments. McGeveran, who most recently consulted for New York-based Confluence Philanthropy, was until 2013 senior vice president of governance and sustainable investment at F&C Asset Management. Announcement

Frank-Peter Martin, Partner at German private bank Metzler with responsibility for asset management, is leaving the bank at the end of this year over what a spokesman said were “internal differences” over strategy. From January 1 2015, Martin will be replaced by Gerhard Wiesheu, another Metzler partner. The spokesman said that like Martin before him, Wiesheu is committed to the bank’s responsible investment strategy. Martin, who spoke to Responsible Investor about that strategy earlier this year, has been a Partner of the bank since 2000.

Franklin Templeton Investments, the New York-listed fund giant with $886bn under management, is seeking an ESG Risk Analyst in London. “To meet the increasing interest from clients and internal stakeholders around Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) investing we are recruiting an additional dedicated ESG resource within the PAIR [Performance Analysis and Investment Risk] ESG Team to work alongside the investment risk team and high priority investment management teams to maintain and develop our offering,” the firm says.

A new Head of Sustainable Finance department is being sought by WWF Switzerland. Applications for the Zurich-based role should be made to Jürg Züllig by October 1.

The £28.8m (€36.9m) Friends Provident Foundation in the UK is recruiting a Trustee to help guide its programmes of giving. The role is voluntary and non-executive. “We particularly are seeking those with an active interest in the function of money and financial systems in shaping our society on a practical and ethical level,” the ad states.