Sandvik, New Paradigm Advisory, Universal Investment, Impax, M&G, Downing, IGG
Sandvik Pension Fund Finland – Tanja Kuokka has been appointed as the new chief investment officer of the Swedish engineering firm’s Finnish pension scheme, having taken up the job on 18 September. She previously worked as CIO of Finland’s University of Tampere.
M&G – Kathy Ryan has been appointed as the firm’s chief sustainability officer. She will lead M&G’s group sustainability strategy, embedding sustainability across the business and helping to drive real-world positive change by acting as a responsible long-term investor.
Ryan joins from Irish Life Investment Management where she was head of responsible investment. There she built and led a team of ESG specialists to advance ESG integration and stewardship across asset classes. In addition, she improved sustainable best practice across industry and chaired the CDP Ireland Network, launched the 30% Investor Initiative Ireland on Diversity and contributed to Ireland’s Climate Action Plan.
Ryan has extensive experience in sustainable investing, having founded an ESG investment research and analytics firm, Global Green Investments which advised clients such as the World Bank, the European Commission and the UK government.
She will join on 13 November and report to chief financial officer Kathryn McLeland.
Downing – The responsible investment manager has made two new appointments: Tony Stenning and Huw Price.
Stenning has joined the firm as head of liquid alternatives. He will be assisting with the overall growth of Downing and brings over 30 years of experience in the financial services industry.
Stenning’s last role was CEO of Atlantic House Group. Before this, he was at BlackRock for over 17 years, where he was most recently the managing director of the UK retail business. During this role at BlackRock, he oversaw growth in assets under management from $17bn to $150bn.
Stenning will also be joined by Price who will be taking the role of head of alternatives structuring. Price also brings over 30 years in financial services including risk, compliance and investment portfolio design with a particular focus on derivatives and alternative investment techniques. Most recently Price was an executive director of Santander Asset Management, responsible for transformation and strategic change.
Universal Investment Group – Francesca McDonagh has been named as chief executive officer, effective January 2024. David Blumer, who has been leading the business as the interim group CEO for the past five months, will continue as chair from that date and support McDonagh and the management team in Universal Investment’s continuing growth journey.
McDonagh has held international leadership roles in the financial services sector over the past 25 years with a focus on business growth and service as well as technology improvement. Most recently, she was group chief operating officer of Credit Suisse Group where she led a number of strategic initiatives, while also helping oversee the bank’s integration into UBS Group earlier this year.
Prior to that she was group CEO of Bank of Ireland, where she managed a repositioning of the group over a five-year period. During this time, McDonagh led two major acquisitions, re-set the culture of the organisation, improved customer service and developed a more scalable digital platform. Before her role at the Bank of Ireland, she held several senior management roles at HSBC.
In her new role at Universal Investment McDonagh will focus on driving growth through geographical expansion and M&A and will support the firm as it continues to strengthen its offering to existing and new clients. She will be backed by Universal Investment shareholders Montagu and CPP Investments, who are committed to actively supporting the company’s growth trajectory over the coming years.
Independent Governance Group (IGG) – The UK’s provider of professional pensions trusteeship and governance services has appointed Clare Kember as its head of outsourced governance services.
Kember has more than 20 years of scheme governance and trusteeship experience. She was appointed as a trustee director in April 2022 having joined, and subsequently working through, the business eight years ago.
IGG’s outsourced governance services team works with firms where an in-house pensions manager is unavailable, or where in-house teams require additional support in an increasingly complex legislative and regulatory environment. The service offering is entirely flexible according to business need, with both short-term projects and long-term appointments available.
Kember takes over the role from John Lovell, trustee director and previous head of outsourced governance services. Lovell will retire at the end of the year after more than 30 years in the pensions industry.
New Paradigm Advisory – Mark Manning will be leaving the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) at the end of the year to launch an advisory agency, New Paradigm Advisory. Manning has worked at the FCA for more than five years, initially as a primary markets policy manager before stepping into a more sustainable finance-focussed role.
His responsibilities have included developing strategic policy, with a focus on sustainability disclosures and transition planning. Market participants are eagerly awaiting the FCA’s final plan for rules to implement the UK government’s Sustainability Disclosure Requirements (SDR) regime, including creating labels for ESG and sustainability-related investment products.
Manning has also been a member of the group responsible for developing the Transition Plan Taskforce’s disclosure framework and guidance, as well as a member of the IOSCO sustainable finance taskforce, including as workstream co-chair.
In a social media post, Manning said he planned to continue to work with the FCA in an advisory capacity and to remain actively engaged with the FCA initiatives he has worked on in his current role, such as the TPT. He also said he would be working with the IFRS Foundation to support global adoption of the new standards issued by the International Sustainability Standards Board, and with Chapter Zero to help embed a sustainability mindset in corporate boardrooms.
Impax Asset Management – The specialist asset manager investing in the transition to a more sustainable economy has named Ross Pamphilon as head of fixed income.
In this newly created role, Pamphilon will lead a growing team of fixed income portfolio managers and analysts within Impax’s listed investments team. Impax runs strategies within US investment grade and US high yield, with fixed income assets under management and advice of £1.4bn ($1.6bn).
Pamphilon is based in London and reports to Charles French, deputy CIO, listed investments. He was formerly head of fixed income, EMEA for Wells Fargo Asset Management, where he led the global fixed income and European credit teams. Previously, he was a co-founder of European Credit Management, where he built a career as a portfolio manager and held the positions of head of portfolio management, head of investments and CIO, with responsibility for portfolio management, credit research and investment strategy.
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