People moves: Alecta poaches duo from AMF

Alecta – Sweden’s largest pension fund Alecta has poached two senior staff from AMF, the country’s second-biggest occupational pension provider.

Marie Litezings, AMF’s head of insurance since December 2020, has been hired as Alecta’s new head of customer relations, and will become part of Alecta’s management team.

Also, Johanna Bono has been recruited as Alecta’s new head of internal audit, after the previous incumbent left the company in the autumn of last year, according to the pension fund.

Bono, who will take up the role on 1 April, has been head of internal audit at AMF since April 2019, and previously worked in similar roles at FOI (the Swedish Defence Research Agency), and Swedbank.

Litezings has held various positions at AMF for the last 17 years, and is also a board member of the pensions information service Min Pension.

She is succeeding Katarina Thorslund, Alecta’s deputy chief executive officer and head of customer relations, who is retiring in March, and was a key figure at Alecta as it dealt with the bad investments crisis of March 2023, taking over as acting CEO when Magnus Billing was fired.

Aviva Investors – The firm has appointed Heather Brown as head of EMEA institutional client relationship management.

Previously lead for Aviva Investors’ UK Institutional sales team, Brown will report to Steven Gardner, head of Institutional, EMEA, who joined Aviva Investors in May 2024.

In her new role, Brown will be responsible for strengthening Aviva Investors’ relationships and ongoing servicing with its existing institutional investor clients. She was previously primarily responsible for business development with UK pension schemes. She joined Aviva investors in 2018 following a number of years as an investment consultant.

She also has experience as a trustee director for the hybrid Aviva Staff Pension and in prior roles spent a number of years advising both defined benefit (DB) and defined contribution (DC) pension scheme clients on a range of investment issues, including strategic asset allocation and manager selection.

Brown’s appointment comes as Aviva Investors continues to focus on growing its institutional business across a range of private and public market investment strategies, including supporting increased access for institutional investors to investment opportunities in private markets through the creation of its range of Long Term Asset Funds (LTAFs).

The process of appointing a new head of UK institutional following Brown’s promotion is currently underway.

Regeneration.VC – Narina Mnatsakanian has joined as partner and chief impact officer at Regeneration.VC.

Mnatsakanian is a pioneer in the field and has been championing sustainable and impact investing for nearly two decades including key roles with the United Nations and leading asset managers. Most recently she was head of impact investing at UBS Asset Management where she led the development of impact framework, and advanced listed and private markets impact strategies.

Prior to UBS Mnatsakanian worked at Van Lanschot Kempen where she was head of sustainable and impact investing and portfolio manager of the Kempen Global Impact Pool, an Article 9 multi-asset impact fund of funds.

Allianz – The German insurer has appointed Ludovic Subran as the new group’s chief investment officer, working closely with the investment officers of Allianz entities globally.

The investment manager and subsidiary of Allianz Group with €700bn in total assets, Allianz Investment Management SE (AIM), has appointed Mario Skoric as its new CEO.

Both Skoric and Subran have served as managing directors and co-leads of AIM since 1 January 2025. They replace AIM managing directors Claus Stickler and Carsten Quitter, who will retire and leave the Allianz Group during the course of this year.

In addition to his new leadership role, Subran will remain chief economist of Allianz SE and continue to lead the insurer’s economic research unit.

In his previous role, Skoric served as global head of ALM/SAA and member of the investment management board of AIM, responsible for asset/liability management and strategic asset allocation for the €700bn proprietary Allianz investment portfolio.

Pensions for Purpose – Laasya Shekaran has joined Pensions for Purpose’s growing team as a director.

With extensive experience in investment consulting and a strong commitment to responsible investment, Shekaran joins Pensions for Purpose after nearly eight years at LCP, where she progressed from an investment analyst to a senior investment consultant, where she collaborated with a wide variety of clients, specialising in the responsible investment team.

Pension Insurance Corporation – The UK-based insurer of defined benefit pension schemes has appointed Martin Pike to join PIC’s board as an independent non-executive director, while Tracey Graham has joined the boards of PIC and PIC’s parent company, Pension Insurance Corporation Group Limited (PICG), as an independent non-executive director.

Pike will be a member of PIC’s audit, investment and origination, and risk committees. Graham will be senior independent director of PIC, subject to regulatory approval, and will be a member of PIC’s audit, customer, and nomination committees. The appointments are effective as of 1 January 2025.

Graham has extensive experience as a senior independent director and remuneration committee chair, and is currently the senior independent director at Nationwide Building Society and a non-executive director and chair of the remuneration committee of Close Brothers.

Pike is chair and joint founder of Greencore Homes, a net zero carbon and low energy residential construction business, which has grown through start-up into scale-up stage with external investment. He has over 30 years of experience in the financial services and insurance sectors as a strategy and risk consultant, and actuary.

ERGO – Marc Braun, currently member of the management board of Allianz Pensionsfond, has been appointed as a member of the management board for ERGO Vorsorge Lebensversicherung, the subsidiary of the German insurer ERGO offering private and occupational pension products.

Braun succeeds Ulrike Taube, effective from April.

In his new role, Braun will lead the further growth of the occupational pension business at ERGO. Company pensions are strategically important for ERGO Vorsorge Lebensversicherung.

Braun has served in different management positions for the Allianz Group since 1989. In 2015 he became managing director of Allianz Pension Consult, and a year later he was also appointed managing director of the Allianz Corporate Pension Advisors.  Most recently, he led the corporate customer business of Allianz Lebensversicherungs.

Assoprevidenza – The Italian association of the complementary pension sector has appointed Degan Gianni as a new member of the board of directors, succeeding Orlando Vari.

The association has also appointed Claudio Iesca as president and Claudia Daffunchio as a new member of the board of auditors.

Aon – Matt Duffy has been recruited as chief commercial officer for global benefits. Based in the UK, he will report to Aon’s head of global benefits, Michael Pedel, and will lead the development and execution of the global benefits commercial strategy.

Duffy returns to Aon from Mercer Marsh Benefits, where he served as global commercial leader from 2017, establishing the commercial function and driving global growth strategies for multinational solutions. Earlier in his career, he spent six years at Aon as head of online consulting, focusing on employee benefits communication and administration solutions.

Duffy will work with the global benefits team to create tailored, data-led and technology-enabled solutions for multinational clients seeking to optimise their global employee benefits and retirement programmes, with an emphasis on strengthening Aon’s commercial strategy and sales propositions across its global benefits portfolio.

The Tracker Group – The group that oversees the Carbon Tracker and Planet Tracker brands has appointed Christine Chow as its inaugural CEO.

With a mission to transform global financial activities and reallocate capital to create a resilient, just, net zero and nature-positive future, Chow will lead the next phase of this financial think tank’s award-winning work. This follows a decision by the board to bring Carbon Tracker and Planet Tracker more closely together under a single leadership team.

Chow brings 27 years of finance experience and a specific focus on sustainable and impact investing, as well as in governance in technological disruption. She has held global executive leadership roles at UBS, Credit Suisse, HSBC, Schroders and Federated Hermes, among others. She is the board chair of the International Corporate Governance Network (ICGN) and is an honorary adviser to the Accounting and Financial Reporting Council (AFRC) Hong Kong, the independent regulator of the accounting profession.

SL Pension Fund – Guðmundur Stefán Steindórsson, the Icelandic pension fund’s current head of risk management, is to take over from CEO Sigurbjörn Sigurbjörnsson on 1 June.

Sigurbjörnsson has requested to step down in May after working at the pension fund for 37 years, having been CEO since October 1997, SL Pension Fund said.

Steindórsson, the incoming CEO, has worked at the pension fund since 2016 as head of risk management, and the fund said he had been involved in a variety of projects within the organisation, and knew its operations very well.

Ninety One – David Derger has been appointed by the investment manager as its sales director for Northern Europe, a newly-established role.

The firm said Derger, who will be based in Stockholm, will be responsible for driving its commercial development in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Iceland and Finland, which it said was a key business region within Central and Northern Europe.

Derger joins from PGIM Fixed Income, where he was head of Nordic region.

Aream Group – Christine Brockwell has joined aream Group SE as chief investment officer. This will further drive the company’s growth.

Brockwell joins from Aquila Clean Energy in Hamburg, where she was chief product officer and a member of the executive board. Prior to this, she worked as managing director at Global Capital Finance in Frankfurt and New York, where she was responsible for financial advisory mandates for investments in the renewable energy sector.

Savills Investment Management – The international real estate manager has appointed Michael Neal to the role of global CIO for equity investment.

Neal joins the firm’s global executive committee and reports to CEO Alex Jeffrey. This appointment follows the departure of Andrew Allen from Savills IM.

Neal joins Savills IM with an extensive track record across all real estate markets and sectors in Europe and APAC. Previously, he has held senior roles at Nuveen, a TIAA company, most recently as CIO of EMEA and head of fund management.

Brown Advisory – The firm has created a co-CEO structure and appointed Mike Hankin and Logie Fitzwilliams to share CEO responsibilities.

Hankin has served as the sole CEO and president since the firm became private and independent in 1998. Fitzwilliams started with Brown Advisory in 2003, and has most recently served as the head of international business and global head of sales.

Together, the firm’s independent board of directors and Hankin decided that a co-CEO structure would be the best design to provide the leadership needed to meet the growing needs of the firm’s clients, colleagues and shareholders. As a team, Hankin and Fitzwilliams, who have worked closely together for the last 15 years, will deepen the firm’s partnership and collaborative culture to drive results for all stakeholders.

This evolution represents the most significant change in Brown Advisory’s leadership since the firm adopted its current private, independent structure in 1998. As co-CEOs – and co-Presidents – both Hankin and Fitzwilliams will serve on, and report to, the board that governs the firm.

Cleantech for Europe – Victor van Hoorn is joining Cleantech for Europe as its new director, to oversee its strategic advocacy towards EU Institutions.

Van Hoorn brings over a decade of experience in Brussels, working at the intersection of capital markets, sustainability, and policy. Before joining Cleantech for Europe he was managing director of the Brussels office of the Investment Company Institute and before that executive director of the European Sustainable Investment Forum (Eurosif).

Universal Investment Group (UI) – Jeremy Albrecht has been appointed as the firm’s new CEO for Luxembourg.

In this role, Albrecht will be responsible for heading UI’s Luxembourg platform, which consists of both UI Luxembourg and fund administrator UI efa. He will oversee total assets under administration of approximately €400bn across UI’s Luxembourg platform.

Albrecht will be responsible for driving forward UI’s Luxembourg platform, including by further enhancing the product offering – especially for asset managers – by building bridges to continental Europe with active fund distribution support.

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