People moves: Mercer appoints CEO for Switzerland [updated]

Mercer, ABP, AllianzGI, Candriam, KAS Bank, Simplitium, Eaton Vance, Actuarial Association of Europe, Unigestion, Cardano, Hermes, Carbone 4, Schroders, JPMAM, Hamilton Lane

Mercer – The consultancy giant has hired Samuel Lisse as CEO of its Swiss business. He joins from Vita Collective Foundation, a provider of occupational retirement funds, where he was CEO for six years. Lisse has also worked at Alexander Forbes Financial Services in South Africa as pension fund leader, and has held positions at Assurinvest and Swiss Life Pension Services. He takes over from Catherine Schoendorff who has left to pursue new projects, Mercer said.

Separately, Aled Jones, principal in the consultancy’s responsible investment team, has left the company, a spokesperson has confirmed. He had been at Mercer for just over six years. Before joining Mercer Jones worked for the London Pension Fund Authority and before that at the Pension Protection Fund, in both cases developing and implementing the funds’ responsible investment strategies. He has also worked at Innovest, Jupiter Asset Management and F&C Investments.

Netherlands’ Ministry of Social Affairs – Jetta Klijnsma, state secretary for pensions at the Dutch ministry of Social Affairs, has been nominated as the new Royal Commissioner of the province of Drenthe. Since 2008, Klijnsma has been state secretary in two consecutive cabinets under prime ministers Jan-Peter Balkenende and Mark Rutte. Under Rutte, she was responsible for the update of the pensions system as well as raising the retirement age for the state pension.

ABP – The €389bn Dutch civil service scheme has appointed Philip Stork as board member as of 1 October, following his nomination by the pensioners’ representatives in the scheme’s accountability body. Stork succeeds Michael Damm who died at the end of last year.

Currently, Stork is a professor of financial markets and instruments at Amsterdam’s Free University and is also a trustee at Vervoer, the €23.5bn industry-wide pension fund for private road transport. Earlier in his career, he was head of derivatives and managing director for investment banking at Fortis and its predecessors. He was also a member of the executive board at Van der Hoop Bankiers.

Allianz Global Investors – George McKay, co-head of the asset manager will retire in April next year, it was announced today. He will step into a non-executive vice chair role upon relinquishing his executive duties. Karen Prooth has been appointed AllianzGI’s new global chief operating officer. She will join in November from BlackRock, where she was most recently global platform head for ETF and index investments. She also used to be global co-COO of iShares. McKay has also been fulfilling the role of global head of distribution, and Tobias Pross will replace him in this role from next April. Pross is head of EMEA at AllianzGI and a member of its global executive committee. McKay is currently co-head of the firm alongside CEO and CIO Andreas Utermann.

Candriam Investors Group – The asset manager has named Koen Van de Maele as global head of investment solutions and member of its executive committee. He was previously deputy chief investment officer at Candriam, where he has worked for 16 years in various roles. In his new position, van de Maele is in charge of the design of tailor-made investment solutions, periodic product portfolio review and product innovation, as well as the development, under the IndexIQ brand, of the group’s European exchange-traded funds business.

KAS Bank/Simplitium (updated) – Stewart Bevan and Tom Hibbard have left the UK subsidiary of Dutch custodian bank KAS Bank to join Simplitium, a fintech firm. Bevan was a product manager at KAS Bank and Hibbard a business development manager. The pair played a key role in creating a cost transparency dashboard for the pensions industry that KAS Bank launched earlier this year. At Simplitium, they will continue to work on transparency solutions for pension schemes. Bevan is a member of the Financial Conduct Authority’s working group on institutional costs disclosure, chaired by Chris Sier.

Separately, KAS Bank today announced plans to create a dedicated fintech innovation division to “radically transform” governance technologies available to UK pension schemes.

Eaton Vance – Thomas Body has joined the asset manager as business development director for Germany and Austria, with a view to managing a new office in Frankfurt. The appointment is part of Eaton Vance’s efforts to strengthen its team in the region to meet growing client interest, the firm said. Body joins from Aberdeen Standard Investments where he was head of business development for financial institutions in Europe. He is responsible Eaton Vance’s client relationships with German pension funds, investment consultants, insurance companies and institutional fund buyers.

Actuarial Association of Europe (AAE) – Thomas Béhar is the association’s new chairperson, succeeding Kristoffer Bork. Esko Kivisaari was elected vice chairperson. A French national, Béhar was president of the French actuarial association from 2006 to 2010, and again from 2012 to 2016. AAE has also adopted a new strategy and governance structure, which sees the board of directors no longer comprising the committee chairpersons but acting as a separate body with nine elected members. Béhar has said he wants to extend the AAE’s relationship with European institutions so that they can better understand the soundness of decisions from an actuarial perspective.

Unigestion – Alexandre Déruaz has been appointed head of portfolio construction for the firm’s equities products. He joins after a 10-year spell at Lombard Odier, where he was most recently head of systematic equities and alternatives. He was also previously head of the firm’s smart beta arm. Déruaz has also worked at Union Bancaire Privée and BNP Paribas.

Cardano – The fiduciary management provider has hired Cédric Bucher as co-head of defined contribution (DC), alongside Ralph Frank. He joins from Architas, part of AXA, where he was head of Architas UK funds. He moved to Cardano at the start of September and will focus on the commercial development of Cardano’s DC business. The group was recently appointed by NEST to offer general investment advice and support with fund manager search and selection exercises.

Hermes Investment Management – The asset manager wholly owned by the BT Pension Scheme has appointed Silvia Dall’Angelo as senior economist. She joins after 10 years at hedge fund Prologue Capital. Eoin Murray, head of investment, said Dall’Angelo’s “insight, knowledge and expertise will be a tremendous asset to the business”.

Carbone 4 – The French carbon analytics company has appointed Matthieu Maurin as managing director of its subsidiary, Carbone 4 Finance, which is dedicated to developing carbon data solutions for finance institutions. Maurin was previously a director in the sustainable finance team of BNP Paribas’ investment bank. French pension funds ERAFP and FRR have both used Carbone 4.

Schroders – The UK listed manager has named Reto Schwager as CEO of Schroder Adveq, the firm’s recently acquired private equity specialist arm. He will join on 1 January, taking over from Sven Liden. He was previously at financial services group Orix Corporation where he was global head of private equity at Robeco and member of the executive committee of RobecoSAM. Schwager has also worked at Partners Group and was chairman of AIG Investment (Europe).

JP Morgan Asset Management – JPMAM’s Global Insurance Solutions Group has hired three staff to its client advisory and strategic analytics teams. Mark Oldcorn has joined as head of international insurance solutions, Charles Matterson as head of UK insurance solutions and Jinglun Yao as an associate within the institutional strategy and analytics team.

Oldcorn was previously group relationship manager at Deutsche Börse, and will be responsible for building and maintaining relationships with insurance companies outside the US. Matterson joins from Schroders where he was a client director. In his new role he will focus on relationships with UK insurers. Yao was previously an intern at JPMorgan Market Risk Quantitative Research.

Hamilton Lane – The private markets specialist has hired Nick Kavanagh to its London office as a vice president on its co-investment and secondary teams. He joins from Singapore’s Temasek, and has also worked at Pantheon Ventures and Gresham Private Equity.