People moves: People’s Partnership hires new business development head

People’s Partnership  – The provider of the UK’s largest commercial workplace pension scheme has appointed Max Gist as its new head of business development.

Gist has an impressive track record of developing strong relationships in financial services, and particularly the corporate pensions market, bringing a wealth of experience to his new role for People’s Pension. He joins from Aegon, where he was responsible for managing and growing strategic relationships with top employee benefit consultancy firms across the UK.

Throughout his career, Gist has played a central role in client engagement, business growth, and relationship management within the corporate pensions market and banking, working at Scottish Widows and Lloyds Banking Group.

Pensions UK  – Dirk Paterson and Matthew Blakstad  have been appointed as deputy directors.

The appointments strengthen the Pensions UK team following the launch of a new brand and strategy as the pensions sector enters a defining period of structural change, it announced.

Paterson joins as deputy director of external affairs. He is a senior communications and strategic leader with more than 25 years of experience spanning public affairs, policy, marketing and corporate communications. He joins from Business Banking Resolution Service where he was customer director. He previously founded a corporate communications agency which specialised in pensions and financial services and led public policy and advocacy at Nest. His career has spanned pensions, banking, technology, and third-sector leadership.

Blakstad becomes deputy director of strategic policy and research. He is a pensions and savings expert with more than 20 years of experience translating insight into impact. Following consulting roles at PwC and Talking People, he helped lead the roll-out of state and workplace pensions reforms at the Department for Work and Pensions. As a co-founder of Nest Insight, he has spent the past decade leading pioneering research that has influenced public policy on the financial security of UK households.

Both roles are newly created and designed to bolster Pensions UK’s policy, research and advocacy expertise with the Pension Schemes Bill and the Pensions Commission in progress.

Goldman Sachs Asset Management (GSAM) – Simon Bentley has joined GSAM’s fixed income team as head of UK LDI and CDI.

In his new role, Bentley will lead the UK pensions solutions team, which is part of GSAM’s fixed income institutional solutions team co-led by Frank Viola and Matt Maciaszek.

Bentley joins from Columbia Threadneedle Investments, where he most recently served as head of solutions client portfolio management.

Global Tailings Management Institute (GTMI) – The GTMI and its founding partners, including the Principles for Responsible Investment, have announced the organisation’s inaugural, multi-stakeholder board.

Including representation from academia, legal regulators, industry, indigenous communities, workforce and investors, it will be chaired by former Anglo American CEO Mark Cutifani and includes John Howchin, the former Secretary General of the Council on Ethics of the Swedish National Pension Funds.

GTMI will be responsible for overseeing the Global Tailings Management Standard, which is the outcome of efforts by investors, mining companies and third-sector organisations to avoid a repeat of the Brumadinho disaster in Brazil in 2019.

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