SPP, TPT, Barnett Waddingham, CoreLife, Industriens Pension, SH Pension, HSBC, Movestic, Royal London, Jupiter, iM Global Partner, First State, BMO, PPF, Kempen, SSGA, Law Debenture

Society of Pension Professionals (SPP) - The representative body for the wide range of providers of advice and services to work-based pension schemes and to their sponsors has appointed Fred Emden as its new CEO, a new role that has been created this year. Prior to joining, He spent more than eight years as deputy CEO of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG). Before joining the RCOG, he was deputy CEO of the Scottish Ballet.

Emden will work with the president and the council to formulate and regularly review SPP’s strategic priorities and objectives to ensure that appropriate mechanisms are in place to deliver value to members, including planning and delivery of member events and other benefits.

Paul McGlone, SPP president, said: “With numerous pension initiatives having been delayed due to Brexit, 2020 looks set to be an extremely busy year for pensions. Our proactive engagement with the pensions industry will seek to help our members help their clients, and ultimately pension savers.”

TPT Retirement Solutions (TPT) – A UK pension provider has strengthened its leadership team as the growth in defined contribution (DC) assets continues to accelerate. Philip Smith joins as DC director, at a time when TPT has seen its DC assets climb to £1.6bn (€1.8bn) and DC membership more than double over the last five years to more than 240,000.

Smith joins from PwC where he served most recently as head of DC. He brings more than 30 years of experience and previously held senior roles with Buck Consultants, Opus Holdings and Health Group.

He will be joined by Joy Mahon who moves from Aviva to become TPT’s new head of DC. Mahon brings more than 15 years of experience in pensions having previously helped the likes of Aon and Willis Towers Watson successfully develop their pension offerings.

Mike Ramsey, TPT’s chief executive officer, said: “The DC arm of TPT is becoming an increasingly important part of the business and as a leading provider of workplace pension schemes, it is important we have an offering that is up there with the best in the industry.”

Barnett Waddingham – The pensions and investment consultancy has hired Amanda Latham, previously at the UK’s pensions regulator, to lead its development of firm-wide policy on key industry issues, overseeing the production of research reports, policy briefings and blogs.

At The Pensions Regulator, where she worked for nearly nine years, Latham’s focus was on governance and investment, with Barnett Waddingham describing her as having led “complex policy projects including defined benefit consolidation, building new regulatory frameworks for superfunds and collective defined contribution schemes, and setting standards for professional pension trustees”.

She is also co-founder of the Young Pension Trustee Network, a group for young and aspiring trustees to share experiences and develop skills to promote a more inclusive and diverse industry.

CoreLife Investors – Stuart Grant, the managing director of Stanhope and former Blackstone partner, is to leave the company in the summer to establish a new real estate investment and asset management business. The new firm, CoreLife Investors, will be a London based, value-driven, real estate investment and asset management platform with a particular focus on life-science innovation clusters and core-plus opportunities.

The chair and strategic advisor for the new platform will be Graham Stanley, formerly the founder of the prolific real estate private equity firm Moorfield and a former JV partner of Blackstone’s.

Grant has been Stanhope’s managing director and a board member since 2018 when he joined directly after spending 18 years at Blackstone where he was a senior managing director helping oversee its Asia Pacific business.

Industriens Pension — Danish labour-market pension fund Industriens Pension has appointed Peter Juhl Nielsen as director in its unlisted investments department. He joins the firm from his current role as head of alternatives and private equity at Danish property foundation Realdania, where he has worked for 11 years.

At Industriens Pension, Juhl Nielsen is to have a key role in private equity, infrastructure and property funds, reporting to the head of unlisted investments, Jan Østergaard.

Industriens Pension’s investment department has undergone a number of changes since its CIO Karsten Kjeldsen left to become CEO of the Danish Teachers’ Pension Fund (Lærernes Pension) in November. After he was replaced by the fund’s former head of listed investments Peter Lindegaard, Industriens Pension then split its listed investments department, creating separate teams for equities and bonds.

Juhl Nielsen will take up his new role by 1 May, Industriens Pension said.

SH Pension - Catrina Ingelstam, chair of the supervisory board of Swedish pensions buffer fund AP6, has taken over as acting CEO of SH Pension’s investment funds arm Svensk Handel Fondförsäkring.

She is replacing the previous CEO Kjell Björk, who is leaving the role now that the fund’s subsidiary is merging with SH Pension – the SEK6bn (€567m) mutual trade-sector pension fund – and is to apply to operate under Sweden’s IORP II regulatory regime rather than to be within the scope of the Solvency II framework, as it had previously planned.

Björk said the idea had always been that his assignment would end when this came about. Ingelstam has held senior positions at Skandia, AMF and Folksam, and currently runs her own consulting business. She also has a number of non-executive board positions including that of chair of AP6, the national pensions buffer fund specialising in private equity.

HSBC Global Asset Management – Patrice Conxicoeur has been appointed CEO Singapore and head of South East Asia, subject to regulatory approval. He is moving from Japan where he is currently CEO of HSBC Global Asset Management (Japan).

In his new role, Conxicoeur is tasked to lead and expand HSBC Global Asset Management’s business in South East Asia with specific focus on key markets such as Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines. He has deep knowledge of and nearly 30 years of extensive experience in the asset management industry.

Before assuming his current role in Japan five years ago, Conxicoeur held various senior roles at HSBC Global Asset Management, including global head of insurance coverage and head of institutional business in Asia Pacific. Prior to that, he was CEO of Sinopia Asset Management, Asia-Pacific.

In Japan, Masayuki Kaneko will step up as CEO, replacing Conxicoeur. Masayuki, who is currently deputy head of global banking and head of Financial Institutions Group (FIG), The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Limited in Japan, joined HSBC in 2013.

Both Kaneko and Conxicoeur will report to Pedro Bastos, ceo for Asia Pacific. Conxicoeur will also report to Anurag Mathur, head of retail banking and wealth management in Singapore, while Kanekoi will also report to Edward Weeks, CEO for the HSBC Group in Japan.

Movestic - Robert Edberg has been appointed as head of distribution and sales at Swedish pension provider Movestic, replacing Michael Gunnarsson, who is ending his long-term consultancy work for the firm.

Edberg has previously been CEO of savings and insurance advice firm Hjerta as well as CEO of SH Pension’s fund management arm Svensk Handel Fondförsäkring. He has also been a member of the board of the Swedish Insurance Brokers’ Association.

Edberg has had a business development assignment at Movestic since last summer, the firm said.

Royal London – Candia Kingston has been appointed as chair of the mutual’s investment advisory committee (IAC), having joined it as an independent member in December 2018. She takes on the role following the departure of Julius Pursaill, who was IAC chair for six years.

Kingston has more than 20 years of experience in the UK pensions and investment industry and holds professional trustee roles at Capital Cranfield Trustees and Scottish Pension Trustees. She has chaired several trustee boards and has worked with schemes ranging from £3m to £6bn. She is the second independent member out of a team of five pension and investment experts on the IAC.

Jupiter Asset Management – The asset manager has hired Christopher Smith as a fund manager on its UK growth strategy. He will join Jupiter in June and will take over the management of the £958m Jupiter UK Growth Fund at the end of that month. He will succeed manager Steve Davies, who is leaving the company to pursue other opportunities. Equities analyst James Moir, who has worked with Davies on the fund since 2017, will bring continuity for investors, enabling a smooth transition between managers.

Smith will join from Newton Investment Management where he has worked for nearly 10 years, starting out as a global oil and gas research analyst before becoming a UK equities research analyst in 2016. In January 2018 he took on lead responsibility for the Newton UK Opportunities Fund as portfolio manager.

iM Global Partner – The firm has appointed Philippe Uzan as deputy CEO and CIO asset management. He will be in charge of managing the iM Global Partner fund platform and in particular the OYSTER fund range.

Based in Paris, Uzan will be in charge of the management of the Luxembourg SICAV fund range – representing €2bn in assets under management – and will be responsible for the selection and monitoring of the strategies chosen by iM Global Partner to sub-delegate the financial management of its funds.

Uzan has more than 25 years of experience, primarily in asset management. He joins after more than 11 years at Edmond de Rothschild Asset Management where he was CIO and member of the executive committee. He previously held various operational positions in other asset management companies such as Natixis Asset Management and AGF (Allianz Group).

First State Investments – Amanda Tibbett has been appointed chief marketing and communications officer and Bachar Beaini managing director for the Americas.

Tibbett, based in Sydney, has been managing the rebrand of the business in Australia for the past nine months and in her new role will take on the management of the marketing, communication, digital and brand functions globally. Prior to First State Investments, she was head of marketing and digital, Asia Pacific at Fidelity.

Beaini has held roles in various regions since 2004. In July last year, he was appointed to the regional managing director role in an acting capacity, and was responsible for management and coordination of the business in North America as it transitioned in ownership.

BMO Global Asset Management – BMO has added to its fiduciary team in Europe with the appointment of Marco Smelter. Reporting directly to Bart Kuijpers, managing director and head of fiduciary investment in Netherlands, Smelter joins the team as director, portfolio manager for multi management, and has co-responsibility for portfolio construction, research and monitoring of external fund managers.

He was most recently at Corestone Investment Managers, and before that at Theta Capital Management and MN Services (now MN).

Pension Protection Fund (PPF) – The UK’s defined benefit lifeboat fund has hired liana Lazarova as a senior ESG analyst. Her expertise is in carbon, climate and renewable energy. Before joining the PPF, she was an analyst with Trucost, now part of S&P Global.

Kempen Capital Management – Arif Saad has been hired as senior strategist within the firm’s London-based investment strategy team, responsible for advising British pension schemes on the management of their bespoke strategic and dynamic investment strategies, and the oversight of their asset-liability risks.

He joins from Legal & General Investment Management, where he most recently worked as fiduciary manager. Before that he was an advisor to trustees of pension schemes within Mercer’s investment consulting business.

State Street Global Advisors –  Kim Hochfeld has been appointed senior managing director and global head of the asset manager’s cash business, within its global institutional group. She was most recently with Morgan Stanley Investment Management, where she was a managing director and head of liquidity distribution for EMEA and Asia. At SSGA she will be responsible for all client-facing activities including sales, strategy, operations and services on behalf of the firm’s cash management client base across the Americas, EMEA and Asia Pacific.

Law Debenture – Sally Minchella has joined the firm’s pension trustee team as a director. She joins from Willis Towers Watson, where she worked for 19 years, and has particular expertise in funding, de-risking, scheme re-structuring, offshore arrangements and corporate activity. 

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