The People’s Pension, bfinance, Polaris, JPES Partners, ICG, PMI, IBM, EDHEC, Bayer, Enpam, Nuveen
Bfinance – Frans Verhaar has been appointed managing director, head of continental Europe at bfinance, the specialist consultant that provides investment implementation advice to pension funds and other institutional investors around the globe.
Verhaar began his career at bfinance in 2007 as a senior associate in the manager research team in London. Based in Amsterdam, he is now responsible for operations and client relations across continental Europe, supported by the European offices in Munich, Paris and Rome.
Pensions Management Institute (PMI) – The institute has appointed two new members to its executive team to drive the delivery of its strategic vision to advance pensions knowledge, foster industry collaboration and enhance retirement outcomes.
As part of these changes, the PMI has appointed Helen Forrest Hall as chief strategy officer. She will be responsible for driving forward the PMI’s strategic vision and priorities both internally and externally, including through effective working relationships with government, regulatory and other relevant bodies, strengthening the PMI’s advocacy voice.
Hall brings a wealth of experience to the role, having worked in the pensions sector for almost 20 years. She joins from The Pensions Regulator (TPR) where she served as head of regulatory communications.
The PMI has also appointed Matt Knowles as chief learning officer. He will be responsible for the PMI’s education, training and qualifications services, including the PMI Academy. He brings diverse education experience to the role, having worked in the funded and commercial education sectors for 16 years.
Through the effective combination of technology and modern learning principles, Knowles will help to ensure the PMI continues to deliver leading training and qualifications for the pensions industry.
The new appointments are critical to the PMI achieving its strategic plan, which for 2025 is focused on improving member experience, launching the PMI Academy and growing its Global Innovation Centre.
IBM – André Schenek is a new member of the board of IBM Deutschland Pensionskasse VVaG and IBM Deutschland Pensionsfonds AG and is responsible for the capital investments department.
Schenek succeeds Peter Herrmannsberger, who has been appointed as CEO of Philips Pensionskasse.
Schenek has served as an investment manager at IBM’s occupational pension scheme since 2021. Prior to that, he worked at the Sparkasse Hochschwarzwald, Helaba Invest and Deutsche Bundesbank.
IBM Pensionsfonds and IBM Pensionskasse are the pension funds of the IBM Group in Germany and together manage pension assets worth around €6bn.
ICG – The global alternative asset manager is strengthening its German presence with the appointment of Friedel Drees as managing director within its European Corporate strategy, and opening an office in Munich.
Drees will report to European Corporate’s head of DACH, Jens Tonn, who said that the new Munich office will help the firm leverage local origination networks.
Prior to joining ICG, Drees enjoyed a 15-year tenure at The Carlyle Group, where he most recently served as partner and managing director focusing on the DACH region.
The People’s Pension – The UK master trust has announced the appointment of Stuart Reid as its new distribution director.
Reid will join the UK’s biggest independent master trust in February, having most recently worked at Smart Pension, where he was director (workplace pension), to oversee the continued growth of The People’s Pension. During his 30-year career, Reid has worked at major companies such as Scottish Widows and Hymans Robertson, developing a rich experience in working with trustees and employment benefit consultants and developing strong relationships with employers.
Reid joins the profit-for-people organisation at a time when The People’s Pension has recently said it is to begin investing in private markets this year, having reached £30bn (€36bn) of assets under management four months ago.
Bayer – Tamara Voigt has been appointed as deputy chair of the pension schemes for the German pharmaceutical company.
Voigt succeeds Claudia Picker, who was deputy chair of the Rheinische Pensionskasse, the pension fund that started to operate in 2004 as part of a restructuring process of the Bayer company pension schemes – Bayer Pensionkasse, Bayer Beistandskasse and Bayer Pension Trust e.V. Picker left Bayer at the end of 2024.
Voigt is currently head of pensions at Bayer, and a member of the executive board of the Bayer pension funds.
Luisa Distelmaier has been appointed as a new member of the executive board of the Bayer pension schemes.
Nuveen – The asset manager has appointed Harriet Steel as global head of institutional. She will be based in London, and report to Mike Perry, head of global client group and member of Nuveen’s management committee.
In this newly created role, Steel is responsible for accelerating the growth of Nuveen’s institutional business, developing business strategy to globalise its engagement with clients, leading all direct sales, asset class specialists and consultant relations personnel. She will oversee and work in partnership with a team of over 250 professionals, across the breadth of Nuveen’s global distribution network, with teams based in the Americas, EMEA and Asia-Pacific.
Steel joins from European private debt manager Pemberton, where she was partner and head of global clients from April 2023. Previously, she spent over 11 years at Federated Hermes, most recently heading up its international business development.
ENPAM – Italy’s pension scheme for doctors has appointed Vittorio Pulci as the new general director, effective 1 February.
Pulci served as deputy general director of ENPAM for the past nine years, responsible for the flow of contributions and pensions, amounting to around €4bn. He succeeds Domenico Pimpinella, who will leave the position he took over in 2016 to assume a similar role in a joint-stock company listed on the Milan Stock Exchange.
Towers Watson – The consultancy, a WTW business, has appointed Ashu Bhargava as a senior director in its retirement division.
Bhargava’s role will be focused on helping clients across the wide range of pensions risk management opportunities now available, including superfund transactions. Bhargava has joined from Clara Pensions where he spent nearly seven years as chief origination officer.
Bhargava is returning to Towers Watson, having previously spent 16 years at the company until 2016, advising both trustees as scheme actuary and scheme sponsors across the full range of pension issues. Following his first stint at Towers Watson, Bhargava joined L&G as director of strategic transactions, before moving to Clara Pensions in 2018.
Polaris – Robert Carroll is joining the firm as managing partner, alongside Claus Hilpold, Stefan Brägger, and Rolf Dreiseidler.
Carroll will extend Polaris’s fundraising and general partners (GPs) advisory services and also strengthen the coverage of investors across Europe, including expanding the reach into markets such as the UK and France. He brings more than 15 years of experience working with institutional investors and raising capital. Most recently, Carroll served as partner at Sofinnova Partners, a European life sciences private equity firm, where he was head of fundraising, IR and ESG.
EDHEC Infrastructure & Private Assets Research Institute (EIPA) – Tim Whittaker has been appointed to succeed Frederic Blanc-Brude as director of the institute.
Blanc-Brude, founding director of EIPA in 2016, stepped down to focus on his role as CEO of EIPA’s sister organisation, Scientific Infra & Private Assets (SIPA), an ESMA-registered provider of infrastructure and private equities market indices and benchmarks. Since 2019, when Blanc-Brude became its CEO, SIPA has been working with the world’s largest financial institutions and now serves clients representing $700bn (€673bn) of infrastructure AUM and $1trn of PE AUM.
Lanxsess – The German chemicals company has appointed Marcin Prange as manager for pensions and benefits.
Prange previously worked at BASF Pensionskasse as a senior specialist for pensions and benefits, responsible for managing the global pension in an M&A context, and for actuarial issues at BASF Pensionskasse VVaG. He also worked at Mercer.
In his new role, Prange will be responsible for developing a global pension strategy, management of pension and benefit plans globally, and also for the management of pension and benefit issues and M&A.
JPES Partners – The specialist consultancy has appointed James Jackson as a consultant. He brings a wealth of expertise to the firm, further strengthening its advisory services to the asset management industry.
Jackson joins JPES with more than 17 years of investment industry experience. Most recently, he was a senior member of Aon’s global manager research team, where he managed the fund selection process and led research agendas across equity strategies.
At JPES, Jackson will advise clients on delivering and communicating investment strategies, while also contributing in areas including succession planning, due diligence, and team transitions.
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