People moves: Finland’s Ilmarinen picks equities chief

Ilmarinen – Rami Vehmas has been promoted at the Finnish mutual pension insurance company to the position of chief equities officer, replacing Annika Ekman, who was promoted to chief investment officer at the beginning of September.

In the role of senior portfolio manager, Vehmas has been in charge of Finnish and Swedish equities for Ilmarinen for almost nine years, having worked at the firm within equity investment overall for more than 19 years.

Ekman said the earnings-related pension provider had considered both internal and external candidates for the role of chief equities officer.

“As a result of the application process, we ended up with Rami Vehmas based on his strong expertise and vision in equity investment,” she said.

“The pension reform that will come into effect next year, which will strengthen the funding of our pension system, giving us the opportunity to increase equity risk, and I can see that Rami Vehmas’ long experience in the equity markets will play an important role in this,” the CIO said.

Local Pensions Partnership Investments (LPPI) – The investment pool has appointed a new direct infrastructure leadership team to further strengthen its infrastructure investment capabilities.

Jonathan Ord has been promoted to head of direct infrastructure, having served as head of investment since January 2024. In his new role, Ord will take overall responsibility for leading the team, ensuring it continues to deliver strong outcomes across its investment portfolio.

Daniel Hobson, formerly head of infrastructure asset management, will transition into a newly created role of head of origination and execution, leading efforts to deliver new investment opportunities. He will oversee origination activity and strengthen engagement with external partners to build a robust investment pipeline.

James Harraway joins the team as head of value creation, bringing more than 20 years’ experience in infrastructure investment and M&A. He joins from mid-market infrastructure fund Infracapital, where he worked as managing director.

The new leadership team reflects LPPI’s ongoing focus on origination and value creation across its infrastructure portfolio, which enables it to deploy long-term UK pension fund capital into projects that deliver positive societal outcomes, while generating stable, inflation-linked returns for investors.

Broadstone – The UK consultancy appointed Karen Graves to its board as non-executive director.

Graves is an experienced director in the insurance market with 30 years plus of work in the Lloyd’s and London market. She started her career in compliance before becoming chief operations officer and then managing director at an established Lloyd’s managing agency. She has also worked for a global reinsurer, supporting its EMEA operations.

Graves’s appointment to the Broadstone board follows the addition of insurance and actuarial consulting specialist Bill Pedersen as non-executive director in May 2025. It demonstrates Broadstone’s continued strategic focus on growing within the UK insurance vertical across the Life, General and Lloyd’s and London markets.

This objective is supported by the strategic growth investment in Broadstone completed by Lovell Minnick Partners in March 2025, providing the resources to bolster its insurance capabilities, expertise and market footprint.

Fonds de réserve pour les retraites (FRR) – Sophie Haas has started as head of responsible investment strategy at the French Pension Reserve Fund.

She previously served as head of sustainable Investing at JP Morgan International Bank and as co-head of ESG solutions for HSBC Wealth and Personal Banking. She is currently a guest lecturer at INSEEC Grande École.

Legal & General (L&G) – L&G’s asset management business has announced three key appointments as the firm further strengthens the leadership of its index and ETF team.

Boyang Liu has been appointed to a new role as head of systematic solutions, leading investment strategy, research, index and systematic solutions design and execution within the firm’s index and ETFs business. Boyang will be responsible for the delivery of a proposition to new and existing clients. She draws on specialist experience in index innovation from her time at JP Morgan, Barclays and Squarepoint Capital.

The team will be further strengthened with the appointment of Elena Cardella, who has been appointed head of investment specialists, where she will focus on enhancing client propositions and the delivery of L&G‘s index and ETFs investment strategies, from specialist index to segregated mandates and ETF solutions. Cardellan draws on significant sector experience across both institutional and wholesale client audiences from her time at Amundi, BlackRock and BlueBay Asset Management.

In addition, Chirag Pandya joins as the new head of ETF capital markets, responsible for ensuring efficient primary market access and client execution as well as overseeing secondary market quality and surveillance. Reporting to Ed Wicks, the global head of trading and liquidity management at L&G, Pandya will also work to support future growth of the L&G index and ETF ranges. He brings a wealth of experience to the role having previously led ETF capital markets EMEA at Northern Trust Asset Management.

These senior hires follow the announcement earlier this year that David Barron had been appointed as global head of index and ETFs, after 10 years with the business.

The appointments will all work closely with Barron, who is supported by an index team of over 50 professionals managing £511bn of index assets, across circa 400 index portfolios, with a global client base spanning Europe, Asia, Middle East and the US.

Isio – The UK-based consultancy has appointed Naomi L’Estrange as managing director.

In her role, L’Estrange will work alongside senior team members to strengthen relationships with professional trustees and other industry stakeholders. She will contribute to the firm’s work across ESG, trustee board effectiveness, and talent development, reinforcing Isio’s commitment to high standards of governance and responsible investment.

L’Estrange joins with more than two decades of experience in pensions and trustee services, having previously served as managing director of 20-20 Trustees and co-CEO of Vidett. Earlier in her career, she held senior roles at Herbert Smith Freehills, the Pension Protection Fund and in government, where she helped design the moral hazard powers in the 2004 Pensions Act.

Barnett Waddingham (BW) – Andrew Simpson has been appointed as partner in the firm’s actuarial consulting team, strengthening its presence in the Scottish and wider UK pensions market.

Simpson joins from Mercer where he headed up the firm’s Edinburgh office and led on actuarial consulting, defined contribution, investment and strategy. Prior to this, he was deputy leader of KPMG’s corporate consulting team in Scotland, where he played a key role in growing the pension team from inception. 

Simpson brings a wealth of experience in corporate advisory, risk transfer and consolidation vehicles, having advised a wide range of corporate and trustee clients on pension and employee benefit strategies, including FTSE companies, multinationals, family businesses, professional bodies and charities.

Simpson’s new role at BW will be focused on driving innovation and delivering client-focused solutions across pensions consultancy. He will be based in Scotland and will work closely with BW’s actuarial consulting team to expand the firm’s capabilities and client base across the region.

Swedish Fund Selection Agency – Anna Ekberg has been appointed by the Swedish government as a new member of the Swedish Fund Selection Agency’s (Fondtorgsnämnden, FTN) board.

A lawyer, she is a unit manager at the Legal, Financial and Administrative Services Agency (Kammarkollegiet), where she is responsible for procurement and contract law. She is also a member of the management team at the National Procurement Services, and has participated as an expert in several government inquiries on procurement law, according to the FTN’s announcement.

She is replacing FTN board member Anders Sjöborg, security manager and chief legal counsel at the Swedish Defense Materiel Administration (Försvarets materielverk, FMV), who asked to resign from the FTN board due to a heavy workload in connection with the expansion of the Swedish armed forces.

Glass Lewis — Mark Makepeace, CEO of Wilshire Indexes, has been appointed to the proxy adviser’s board of directors.

Makepeace has also been group director of information services at the London Stock Exchange Group and CEO of FTSE Russell.  

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