EUROPE - Jerome Tagger, head of research at the European Social Investment Forum (Eurosif), has left and won't be directly replaced.

Tagger is moving to the US for personal reasons, a spokeswoman confirmed.

For the moment his responsibilities will be taken over by other people within the organisation. Asked whether Eurosif will be looking for a replacement the spokeswoman said: "Not at the moment". Tagger said he could not comment on his new position as it was not "official" yet.

Tagger headed the research department since 2003. He was responsible for projects such as the 2003 "Socially Responsible Investment among European Institutional Investors", the 2004 "Pension Programme SRI Toolkit" and 2005 "Handbook on active shareholding in a European context".

Last year he supervised the research on institutional SRI.