Fidelity International, Robeco, EY, Fisch, PIMCO, AllianceBernstein, People’s Partnership, PRI, Invesco, Publica, GRI, aba
AllianceBernstein (AB) – The firm’s head of equities Chris Hogbin will assume a newly-created role of global head of investments, effective 1 January 2024.
In his new role, Hogbin will be responsible for AB’s public-market businesses – equity, fixed income, multi-asset and hedge fund solutions, investment solutions and sciences, along with the firm’s responsibility team. By the end of 2024, he will expand his mandate to include AB’s private alternatives business.
AB president and chief executive officer Seth Bernstein said: “The new position will help create a stronger investment organisation for our clients.”
Under his remit, Hogbin will seek to drive investment performance across asset classes by, finding opportunities to develop, deploy and retain talent across the investment organisation, fostering greater collaboration and sharing of best practices, leveraging a common infrastructure, and evaluating opportunities to invest in capabilities that deliver better outcomes for clients, AB said.
Hogbin is an 18-year AB veteran who brings extensive experience and a global perspective to the new role. He joined the firm in 2005 as a senior analyst in the institutional research business before becoming director of research for Europe and Asia. In 2018, he was named chief operating officer of equities as part of the firm’s succession plan. In 2019, he was promoted to co-head of equities, becoming gead of equities in 2020.
Nelson Yu, a 26-year AB veteran with nearly 30 years of global equity markets investment experience, will succeed Hogbin as head of equities.
People’s Partnership – The provider of The People’s Pension has appointed Angela Staral as COO to drive the continued improvement of the services that it offers to both its 6.5 million members and the more than 100,000 employers it serves.
Staral will join the not-for-profit organisation in February from Goldman Sachs, where she is currently COO of investment banking engineering. She has previously worked for HSBC, ING, Sopra Steria and Mercedes-Benz Financial Services. She has lived and worked in Berlin, Frankfurt, Singapore, New York and London during a 20-year career in financial services.
Staral will oversee all customer operations and servicing at People’s Partnership, which with £23bn assets under management is one of the largest workplace pension providers in the UK.
aba – Beate Petry, a member of the aba board since 2022, has been confirmed as the replacement for Georg Thurnes as chair at aba’s most recent general meeting. Thurnes will soon retire and Petry will replace him from May 2025.
Petry has been director of global pensions and benefits at BASF since 2022 and has held several management positions at the firm’s human resources department. In addition to the aba board, she is also a member of the BDA’s company pensions committee and the social security committee.
Petry is also chair of the board of the German Pension Insurance Rhineland-Palatinate and a member of the Federal Board of the German Pension Insurance.
Publica – The board of directors of the Swiss pension fund has appointed Nicolas Schmidt as the new vice chair, effective 1 January. The current vice chair, Jorge Serra, will leave at the end of the year.
Schmidt, who has been a member of the fund’s board of directors since July 2021, will represent the fund’s employees on the board.
Tania Cucè and Adrian Egger have also been elected as two new members of the board.
Invesco – Hamid Asseffar has been appointed as head of EMEA sustainable and impact investing, distribution.
He will be responsible for leading climate finance initiatives at Invesco, deepening the firm’s expertise and capabilities in relation to sustainable, impact and transition investing and overseeing sustainable and impact investing business development with Development Finance Institutions and other International Finance Institutions globally.
Asseffar will work closely with colleagues across the EMEA region to coordinate sustainable and impact-focused fundraising campaigns.
Before assuming his new role, Asseffar was head of asset managers, ETFs and indexed strategies, UK, at Invesco. In this position, he played a key role in business development, helping bring several innovative ETF products to market, as well as leading climate finance initiatives.
PIMCO – The asset manager has named Mohit Mittal, managing director and portfolio manager, as chief investment officer – core strategies. In this role, he will oversee fixed income portfolios across PIMCO’s core suite of strategies – including low and moderate duration, total return and long duration – and lead the core portfolio management team.
Mittal, who will report to Dan Ivascyn, managing director and group CIO, is a longstanding leader on the trade floor, a member of PIMCO’s investment committee and has a strong track record across a broad range of portfolios. He joined the total return portfolio management team five years ago and has contributed to PIMCO’s multi-sector portfolios.
Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) – Conor Kehoe has been confirmed as the investor body’s new chair following the organisation’s 2023 board elections.
Kehoe, who is co-founder of the US-based think tank FCLTGlobal and a senior adviser to McKinsey, will take over as chair from Martin Skancke when the latter’s term as PRI chair draws to a close at the end of the 2023 calendar year.
Kehoe spent 30 years with McKinsey & Co. His experience in responsible investment includes serving as chair of the Integrated Reporting Council and as a member of the G7 Impact Taskforce on Impact Accounting.
Other results from the board elections are:
- Torben Möger Pedersen, former CEO of PensionDanmark, was elected as an asset owner representative for a first term;
- Lebogang Mokgabudi, independent specialist trustee, Government Employees Pension Fund, was elected as an asset owner representative for a first term;
- Takeshi Kimura, special adviser to the board, Nippon Life Insurance Company, was elected as an asset owner representative for a second term;
- Tycho Sneyers, managing partner, LGT Capital Partners, was elected as an investment representative for a third term.
Board members will take up their positions on 1 January 2024. Terms are for three years ending on 31 December 2026.
Fidelity International – The firm has announced two senior appointments in its private assets team focused on further developing its infrastructure capabilities.
Private assets are a strategic growth area for Fidelity as investors seek alternative sources of risk premia to enhance the quality of their investment portfolios – whether that be for return, income or diversification purposes. Since 2021, the firm’s private assets business has grown steadily, offering clients access to real estate and private credit including CLOs, direct lending and structured credit.
Chantale Pelletier joins as global head of infrastructure equity investments. In her new role, she will lead the development of Fidelity’s infrastructure strategy, driving a new product pipeline across both infrastructure debt and equity. She is based in London and reports to Andrew McCaffery, global CIO. She joins from Schroders where she was most recently global head of infrastructure and CEO of Schroders Capital Management (France).
Emma Haight joins from Ares Management. At Fidelity, she will be head of infrastructure debt, responsible for driving the growth of Fidelity’s infrastructure finance proposition, including the development and launch of infrastructure credit strategies and products. She is based in London and reports to Michael Curtis, head of private credit strategies.
Fisch Asset Management – Ivan Nikolov has been appointed as co-head convertible bonds, effective 1 January 2024. He will lead Fisch’s convertible bond team together with Thomas Fischli Rutz. The team consists of five experienced portfolio managers, managing five strategies with a total volume of around CHF2.5bn across the entire convertible bond risk spectrum.
Nikolov was a senior portfolio manager at NN Investment Partners in London, where he co-managed convertible bond portfolios totalling more than $2bn under management. Prior to that, he spent four years as a convertible bond portfolio manager at Aberdeen Asset Management.
EY – The firm has appointed Kevin Humpherson as a new partner to lead pension investments and the fiduciary management oversight (FMO) proposition within EY’s pensions consulting business.
Based in Edinburgh, Humpherson will lead a team from across the UK to spearhead growth for pension schemes as they consider governance, future-state and investment options. As part of his role, he joins EY’s UK pensions leadership team. He joins EY from Deloitte, where he led FMO as part of Deloitte’s investment services team, bringing experience across private sector defined benefit (DB) schemes and local government pension schemes.
EY has also recently hired Priya Jassal as a senior manager to lead its corporate investment consulting proposition. She joins EY from Isio, where she advised DB scheme corporates and trustees and led several investment propositions.
These hires follow the recent appointment of Abi Lee and Adam Palaszkiewicz as secior Consultants in EY’s pensions investment consulting team, who join from First Actuarial and Isio, respectively.
Global Reporting Initiative – Jessica Fries, CEO of Accounting for Sustainability (A4S), has been appointed as the new chair of the GRI Supervisory Board effective 1 January 2024. First joining the board in 2019, Fries became vice chair two years ago.
She takes over as chair from Jack Ehnes (former CEO of CalSTRS) who is stepping down from the supervisory board after five years’ service, including two as chair. Current board member Bola Adeeko (director of special projects at Flour Mills of Nigeria) will be the new vice chair.
Robeco – Malick Badjie has been appointed global head of sales and marketing and member of the executive committee of Robeco. He has been serving in the role on an ad interim basis.
As global head of sales and marketing, Badjie is responsible for Robeco’s sales strategy and organisation, sales teams in 15 countries, consultant relations, and global marketing. He succeeds Alexander Preininger who has been on leave due to personal circumstances and has now decided to leave the company.
The appointment has been approved by the Dutch Authority for the Financial Markets (AFM) and is supported by the Central Works Council of Robeco.
Badjie joined Robeco in 2017 and now serves as head of institutional sales Europe, North America, and Africa. He has over 20 years of experience working in the asset management industry in both sales and investments.
Previously he was a partner at Silk Invest and from 2003 to 2013 he worked at Blackrock, where he held several senior positions.
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