DWS, Glass Lewis, Royal London, Varma, Intervalor, P+, LCP, Standard Life, IIP Denmark, PLSA
Standard Life – Helen Dean has joined the Standard Life Master Trust Company board as chair to oversee the interests of more than 300,000 master trust scheme members.
Dean has led some of the most significant developments in pensions over the last two decades and is credited as the architect of the programme that delivered automatic enrolment in 2010. She was also instrumental in establishing a low-cost pension scheme for the Personal Accounts Delivery Authority (PADA), prior to it becoming NEST.
Dean was chief executive officer of NEST from 2015 until April this year. She was awarded a CBE in the 2021 New Year Honours list for her services to saving.
Royal London Asset Management – The firm is restructuring its global equity team following the resignation of Peter Rutter, head of equities, and several other members of the global equities team, who plan to set up their own company, Royal London AM announced.
Chief investment officer Piers Hillier takes on responsibility for Royal London AM’s global equity capabilities. He has more than 30 years of industry experience, including tenure as head of international equities at Kames Capital among other senior global investment roles.
In managing the global equity team, Hillier is supported by Matt Burgess who continues as head of quant strategies, co-head of UK equities Richard Marwood, and head of sustainable Mike Fox.
There will be no change to the investment approach which underpin the team’s equity capabilities across global equity, UK equity, sustainable or the quantitative funds, Royal London AM stated, adding that the funds will continue to be managed in line with their objectives and restrictions.
Institutional Investment Partners Denmark – Maria Hjorth has been appointed as managing partner at the Danish private equity funds manager, and will join IIP Denmark on 15 June.
She will replace Anette Eberhard, who announced earlier this year she would step down after almost six years leading the asset manager, which is owned by labour-market pension funds company PKA.
Hjorth has been CEO at both VP Securities, the Danish Central Securities Depository which was bought by Euronext in 2020, and before that, at Mercer Denmark.
P+ – Lars Bo Bertram was voted in as the new chair of the Danish pension fund P+ at its annual general meeting at the beginning of April. He is taking over the role from Kim Duus, who has been appointed chair of Denmark’s largest pension provider PFA.
Bo Bertram recently resigned as CEO of Nordic asset manager BankInvest after nine years in the role.
Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association (PLSA) – Nigel Peaple, the association’s director of policy and advocacy, is stepping away from his current role to work on a part-time basis as the PLSA’s chief policy counsel.
After eight years at the PLSA, including six as director of policy and advocacy, Peaple has decided to step back from full-time work and to instead switch to working on a part-time basis. He was also director of policy for five years in the late noughties at the PLSA’s predecessor body, the National Association of Pension Funds (NAPF).
Peaple’s role as executive director policy and advocacy, which includes being a member of the PLSA board, will finish at the end of August.
DWS – The company has proposed Oliver Behrens for election to the supervisory board at its annual general meeting (AGM) on 6 June. It is intended that the supervisory board elects Behrens as its new chair immediately afterwards. He will succeed Karl von Rohr, who in April 2023 informed the company about his intention to step down as chair after six years of service.
Von Rohr, whose mandate as a representative of Deutsche Bank was renewed in June 2023, will remain a member of the supervisory board.
In his new role as chair, Behrens will also become a member of the joint committee consisting of delegated members of the supervisory board and the shareholder of the general partner which is chaired by James von Moltke, president and chief financial officer of Deutsche Bank.
After careful consideration of both the size and the independence of the DWS supervisory board, as well as a general Deutsche Bank guideline to gradually reduce Deutsche Bank management board representation on affiliate boards, von Moltke, who assumed responsibility for asset management at Deutsche Bank’s management board in 2023, has decided to withdraw his candidacy for membership of the supervisory board.
At the same time, Bernd Leukert, member of the management board and chief technology, data and innovation officer of Deutsche Bank, has informed DWS of his intention to step down from the supervisory board of DWS Group at the upcoming AGM. Leukert has been a member of the supervisory board since 2020. His decision also reflects the aforementioned guideline regarding affiliate board representation, to which an exception was made to enable him to join the DWS supervisory board.
LCP – Jenny Harbord joins LCP’s investment team as head of real assets. She brings more than 25 years of experience in the investment and real asset industries.
At LCP Harbord will lead the team that focuses on real assets including infrastructure and real estate. LCP provides investment advice to a variety of clients including pension funds, charities, insurance and sovereign wealth funds with total assets under advisement of circa £850bn.
harbord’s previous roles have included working at a European property investment company where she supported growth of the UK platform through capital raising and acquisitions across the region with multi-sector and multi-risk profiles.
Varma – Hanna Vainio has been appointed as director responsible for IT and digitalisation at the Finnish mutual pension insurance company. She will start the job on 1 August, taking over from Tiina Kurki, who currently manages those operations, and who is leaving the company on 30 September, Varma said.
Vainio is joining from Ilmarinen, the other large pension insurer operating within Finland’s earnings related pension system. Having worked at Ilmarinen since 2021, Vainio’s most recent role there was as department manager in the large customer team.
Intervalor – Richard Gröttheim, the former CEO of Swedish national pension fund AP7, has been appointed as a new board member of asset manager Intervalor, with effect from 15 June, the company announced.
With a wealth of experience in both public and private sectors, Gröttheim will bring valuable expertise to Intervalor new projects and initiatives, it added.
Glass Lewis – The corporate governance and proxy voting adviser has announced that Bob Mann, formerMorningstar Sustainalytics president, will join the firm as its new CEO this month.
Mann was president and chief operating officer of the ESG ratings firm Sustainalytics for more than 15 years, culminating in its 2020 sale to Morningstar. Mann became president of the Morningstar Sustainalytics business unit after that transaction.
Acquired by Toronto-based Peloton Capital Management (PCM) and its co-founder Stephen Smith in 2021, Glass Lewis is one of two global corporate governance and proxy voting advisers, next to ISS.
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