People moves: Ex-Vervoer CIO joins Shell's in-house manager

Shell, Northern Trust, PPF, Doughty Hanson, AllianceBernstein, AXA, Mercer, Korn Ferry, Alecta, Nordax, Government Pension Fund Norway, ABP, SSGA, BlackRock, Vanguard, Neuberger Berman, Centre for European Policy Studies, Hymans Robertson

Shell Asset Management – Patrick Groenendijk has started as head of strategy of Shell Asset Management, the Rijswijk-based asset manager for Shell’s pension funds, including those in the Netherlands and the UK. Groenendijk joins from Northern Trust, where he has been head of worldwide equity strategy at the financial giant’s asset management arm. Between 2005 and 2014, Groenendijk was chief investment officer at Vervoer, the €20bn sector scheme for private road transport.

Pension Protection Fund – The UK’s defined benefit lifeboat scheme has hired Tim Robson as head of alternatives. He joins from Doughty Hanson, a London-based private equity firm. Barry Kenneth, CIO at the Pension Protection Fund, said Robson’s experience in private equity and private debt would help the fund “evolve and expand the alternatives portfolio”. The £23.4bn fund had roughly 20% allocated to alternatives at the end of March 2016, according to its latest annual report.

AllianceBernstein – The $498bn asset manager has ousted its CEO and board chairman Peter Kraus as part of an overhaul of its board of directors which has seen parent company AXA take more direct control. Six of the eight members of the new-look board are AXA employees.

Seth Bernstein has been named president and CEO, joining from JP Morgan Asset Management, where he was global head of managed solutions and strategy. He has worked at JP Morgan Chase for 32 years in various senior roles. Robert Zoellick, former president of the World Bank, has been named chair of AllianceBernstein’s (AB) board of directors. Zoellick was most recently vice chairman of Goldman Sachs, and has held several influential roles in the US government in the Ronald Reagan, George H W Bush, and George W Bush administrations. He also sits on the board of the Singapore sovereign wealth fund Temasek.

The group also appointed four new directors to a “newly reconstituted” board: Barbara Fallon-Walsh, Daniel Kaye, Ramon de Oliveira, and Anders Malmstrom. The first three are directors of AXA Financial, while Malmstrom is chief financial officer. They join the AB board alongside Zoellick and Bernstein, as well as existing board members Denis Duverne – who also chairs AXA’s board – and Mark Pearson, AXA Financial’s CEO.

PKH – Jens Kristian Bøe has been appointed as CIO at PKH the Norwegian pension fund for health enterprises in the Oslo metropolitan area. He will take over some areas of responsibility Mariann Bendriss had in her role as CFO of the pension fund, before she became its chief executive on 1 March. Bøe comes to PKH from his job as portfolio manager at Oslo Pensjonsforsikring (OPF) where he was worked since 2007. Before that, Bøe worked at other organisations in the sector, including several roles at Nordea Asset Management. He will take up the job at PKH on 21 August.

Mercer – Nick Sykes, director of European consulting at Mercer, is to retire next month after 20 years at the consultancy giant. He joined in 1997 and has also chaired the company’s UK and international research committees.

Meanwhile, Tim Burggraaf has also left Mercer to take up the new position of client partner at US recruiting firm Korn Ferry Hay Group as of 1 May. Based in Amsterdam, he will focus on recruiting management staff for the pensions sector. Burggraaf held several positions at Mercer since joining in 2001. He has been head of innovation, growth and sales, as well as defined contribution leader in the Netherlands. His most recent position was head of solutions, products and innovation for Benelux. Prior the his career at Mercer, Burggraaf was an adviser at Aon.

Alecta — Camilla Wirth has been appointed as the new chief financial officer (CFO) at Alecta and will take up the role at the beginning of August. She will replace Katarina Thorslund who has decided to focus on her role as head of the company’s clients division, Alecta said. Wirth comes to the Swedish firm from Nordax Bank, where she was CFO since 2012. Before that, she worked as CFO at Aberdeen Asset Management and as an auditor at KPMG.

Folketrygdfondet – Siri Teigum has been appointed by the Norwegian Finance Ministry as the new chair of the board at Folketrygdfondet, which manages the Government Pension Fund Norway (GPFN). She will take over from Erik Keiserud, who has been chair of the board for more than ten years, on 16 May. Teigum is a partner at the law firm Thommessen as well as the deputy chair of Sporveien and a director of Gyldendal.

In addition, business leaders Liselott Kilaas and Bjørn Østbø have been named as new members of the board, while Marianne Hansen, vice president at Sparebank 1 Nord-Norge, and Renate Larsen, managing director of the Norwegian Seafood Council, have been re-appointed as board members. Anne Kvam, sustainability risk management advisor with DNV, has been appointed as deputy board member. All the new appointments take effect from 16 May this year and will last four years.

ABP – Patrick Fey has been named as the worker representative on the board of the €389bn Dutch civil service scheme ABP, and will take a seat in ABP’s select committees for pension policy and audit. Fey is chairman of the CNV unions for government and public services since 2015. At ABP, he has succeeded Willem-Jelle Berg, who has completed two four-year terms on the ABP board. Until last April, Fey was a trustee of the €187bn healthcare scheme PFZW, where he was a member of the investment committee.

State Street Global Advisors – State Street’s asset management arm has hired Noel Archard as head of global SPDR product, a newly created role within its exchange-traded fund business. SSGA has also appointed Seth Morrison as head of global SPDR marketing, also a newly created role. Archard will oversee product strategy, innovation, range, and “lifecycle management” for SPDR. He joins from BlackRock, where he led the asset management giant’s operations in Canada. Morrison joins from Vanguard where he was head of business development for the passive manager’s high net worth client business.

Neuberger Berman – The asset management firm has hired Jonathan Bailey as head of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing. He joins from Focusing Capital on the Long Term (FCLT Global), an ESG think tank. He has previously worked on sustainability and governance projects under Al Gore, the former US vice president, and former UK prime minister Tony Blair. In his new role, Bailey will work with Neuberger’s investment teams and research departments to help integrate ESG into the firm’s processes. He will also chair the firm’s ESG Investment Advisory Committee.

CEPS/ECMI – The Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS) and European Capital Markets Institute (ECMI), which CEPS manages, are seeking policymakers, industry representatives and academics to join a task force on the challenges and opportunities facing asset allocation in Europe. The purpose of the group “is to contribute to the public debate about the need to facilitate European households’ access to savings products with stable returns over time, and to promote long-term investment across the EU through more capital markets-based financial intermediation”. The task force chairman is Jean-Pierre Pinatton, chairman of the supervisory board at Oddo BHF Group. Cosmina Amariei and Apostolos Thomodakis, researchers at ECMI, are rapporteurs alongside Karel Lannoo, CEO of CEPS and general manager at ECMI.

Hymans Robertson – The UK consultancy firm has appointed five staff as partners in the business, and three to “equity members”. Amanda Switzer (people leader for the firm’s Glasgow actuarial and benefits practice), David Walker (head of LGPS investments), Emma Cameron, Laura McLaren, and Tracy Weller (third party administration leader) are the new partners. Calum Cooper (head of trustee consulting), Jon Hatchett (head of corporate consulting), and Shireen Anisuddin (head of clients) are the equity members.