Caisse des Dépôts, Aon Hewitt, KPS, Van Lanschot Kempen, HSBC GAM, Xafinity Punter Southall, Redington, Candriam, BlueBay, Asset Management One

Caisse des Dépôts – The French state-owned public-interest financial institution has appointed Michel Yahiel as director for the group’s pensions and social protection division, which administers 48 retirement schemes and “solidarity” funds covering 20% of retirees in France.

A high-ranking civil servant, Yahiel was most recently a commissioner general at France Stratégie, a think tank attached to the prime minister’s office. Since 2012 he has been social adviser to the French president. Previous public roles have included being delegate general for the Association of French Regions from 2010 to 2012, and director of economic development and employment for Paris.  

Aon Hewitt Netherlands – Frank Driessen will take over as CEO of Aon Hewitt Netherlands from 1 April. At the moment Driessen is chief commercial officer and chief actuary at the firm. He has been in management positions at Aon since 2001 and previously worked at SPF Beheer and AkzoNobel. Driessen succeeds Pascal Hogenboom, who is leaving the company.

KPS – Kring van Pensioenspecialisten, the Dutch society for pension industry professionals, has named Hedwig Peters as its new chairman. She took over from Tim Zuiderman at the end of January. She has been a board member of KPS for some time and has been treasurer since 2014. Peters has worked as a portfolio manager and fiduciary manager at various insurers and asset managers. At the moment, Peters is an independent director and has a supervisory role with various pension funds.

Van Lanschot Kempen – Leni Boeren joined the executive board of the financial group on 5 February, with responsibility for asset management. She has also been named chair of the management of Kempen & Co. Boeren succeeds Paul Gerla, who recently resigned for medical reasons. She previously worked for Robeco and was chairman of DUFAS, the Dutch fund and asset management association. Boeren is currently a member of the supervisory board of Air France-KLM and Tata Steel Nederland.

HSBC Global Asset Management – Sebastien Faucher has been hired as head of passive fixed income in the asset manager’s investment team, a newly created role. Faucher joins from Legal & General Investment Management, where he was head of index fixed income. From 2006 to 2008, Faucher was an investment manager at SSgA Global Fixed Income. 

Xafinity Punter Southall – The UK pensions consultancy has appointed Patrick McCoy as head of investment. He was previously head of investment advisory at KPMG, and before that spent 10 years at Aon. He will lead the firm’s investment consulting team and reports to Paul Cuff, co-CEO. McCoy left KPMG in early 2016 having been caught up in a tax scandal, but charges against him were dropped last year.

Redington – The UK investment consultancy has hired Natalie Flood and Jonathan Parker for its defined contribution (DC) business. Flood joins from Willis Towers Watson, where she led successful projects with high profile DC schemes. Parker had been running his own consulting firm since 2016 but before that he held senior positions across the asset management, insurance and consulting industries. This included spells at Dimensional Fund Advisors, Barclays, Zurich Life and Willis Towers Watson. Redington launched its DC and savings consulting arm in 2015. 

Candriam – Tanja Bender is to join the asset manager in Frankfurt as senior client relationship manager and will help Candriam build its business with German distributors and institutional investors. Bender was most recently co-country head at Métropole Gestion, with responsibility for business developent for Austria, Germany and Switzerland. Before that she worked at Oppenheim Asset Management, Crédit Suisse Asset Management and Commerzbank. 

BlueBay Asset Management – Polina Kurdyavko is to be sole head of the specialist fixed income manager’s emerging market debt team, assuming the new role in July. She is currently co-head with David Dowsett, who will move away from day-to-day investing to become a strategic adviser on emerging markets for the firm. Kurdyavko joined BlueBay in July 2005 from UBS where she was a credit analyst. She started her career in a macro research boutique in Russia. Dowsett has been with BlueBay since 2002, having joined from Deutsche Asset Management. 

Asset Management One International – The international arm of the Asian asset manager has appointed Serge Kasai as executive director, head of relationship management and senior product manager for EMEA. He joined the firm in 2014 (then known as DIAM Co) as a global product specialist. He previously held positions at Nomura, Nippon Life Insurance Group, Nissay Information Technology in Tokyo and Nissay Deutsche Asset Management Europe in Singapore. 

Topics