People Moves: Ex-ATP Manager To Lead Denmarks Norli Pension

ATP, Norli Pension, BMO GAM, Northern LGPS, TPT Retirement Solutions, CEPB, Achmea IM, Mercer, MN, Transition Pathway Initiative, Jupiter, Hermes, RAM AI

Norli Pension – Mads Smith Hansen, who quit his job as a member of ATP’s top management team last summer, has been appointed the new chief executive of Norli Pension, a Danish pension company owned by Nordic Insurance Consolidation Group that specialises in traditional guaranteed average-yield pensions.

At ATP, Smith Hansen was chief risk officer. In August 2018, the pension fund announced he had decided to leave the fund to take a career break, and he was replaced by Kim Kehlet Johansen from SEB Pension. At Norli Pension, Smith Hansen is taking over on 1 Febuary as chief executive from Henrik Bernhardt, who will be moving to the company’s supervisory board.

BMO Global Asset Management (BMO GAM) – Kristi Mitchem is to replace Richard Wilson as CEO of the €217bn asset manager as of the middle of next month. She is currently CEO at Wells Fargo and head of its asset management business.

Mitchem has also worked at State Street Corporation, BlackRock and Goldman Sachs. BMO said she had been an advocate for diversity and inclusion throughout her career. 

Wilson has been CEO since 2014 and had chosen to retire, the firm said.

Northern LGPS  – Paul Doughty is the new chair of the collaboration of three local government pension schemes (LGPS) from northern England, formerly known as the Northern Pool. He replaces Ian Greenwood, the former chair of the West Yorkshire Pension Fund, who died after a short illness in November. 

Doughty chairs the Merseyside Pension Fund, one of Northern LGPS’s member funds, and the Local Authority Pension Fund Forum, which represents 79 funds in the LGPS with assets over £200bn. The £45bn Northern LGPS combines the assets of the Merseyside, Greater Manchester and West Yorkshire LGPS funds.  

Doughty said: “It’s a real privilege to be asked to take up this role. Both Ian and his predecessor, Kieran Quinn, brought tremendous energy and commitment to this role and to the honourable aim of ensuring council workers enjoy a decent and dignified retirement.”

TPT Retirement Solutions – The UK master trust has named Richard Giles as head of strategic partnerships, a new role intended to support TPT’s strategy to be the country’s leading defined benefit pensions consolidator. Giles joins TPT from PwC where he worked for the last 11 years, latterly as partner, actuary and head of pension advisory services for the northern regions. 

Church of England Pensions Board – The £2.5bn pension investor has hired Stephen Barrie for the newly created role of deputy director of ethics and engagement. The move follows the appointment of Adam Matthews as director of ethics and engagement in May. Barrie was previously acting secretary of the Church’s ethical investment advisory group, which he will continue to support while a successor is appointed. 

Achmea IM – The €130bn asset manager has appointed Leen Meijaard as chairman of it supervisory board (RvC) as of 21 January. He succeeds Erik van Houwelingen, who left following his appointment as head of European sales at the €455bn asset manager Dimensional last year.

Between 2002 and 2017 Meijaard worked at BlackRock, where he was executive chair for the Benelux region and member of the executive committee for Europe, the Middle East and Asia. He also chairs the RvC of Dutch football club Ajax. Last year, Meijaard was appointed senior adviser at investment manager Neuberger Berman.

Mercer – Herwig Kinzler will leave the consultancy’s Germany business in February. A well-known German pensions expert, he joined Mercer in 2003, building the investment consulting business in the subsequent years and becoming partner and CIO. Before joining Mercer he was head of asset consulting services for Germany at Towers Perrin – now Willis Towers Watson.

Achim Lüder, CEO of Mercer in Germany, said Kinzler had developed many important client relationships over the years and significantly contributed to the business’s success. 

MN – Jurgen Stegmann has been appointed a member of the supervisory board (RvC) of MN, the €130bn asset manager and pensions provider for the large Dutch metal schemes PMT and PME. He succeeds Johan van der Ende, and is to focus on asset management, finance and risk management.

Stegmann was chief finance and risk officer at Robeco from 2011 to 2015 and has been on the RvC of ABN Amro, housing corporation Woonstad Rotterdam and building firm Janssen de Jong Groep since 2005. He has also been a member of the executive board of Fortis Bank Nederland and CRO and executive vice chair at merchant bank NIBC in The Hague.

Transition Pathway Initiative (TPI) – Nadine Viel Lamare, formerly head of sustainable value creation at Swedish pension buffer fund AP1, has been appointed to the newly created role of director of the TPI, an asset-owner-developed tool to assess companies’ preparedness for the transition to a low carbon economy.

In the role, which is part-time, Viel Lamare will be responsible for the ongoing development and expansion of TPI. She left AP1 at the end of 2018 and represented the buffer fund on the TPI steering committee.

Jupiter Asset Management – Maarten Slendebroek is stepping down as chief executive of the UK-based asset manager in March, and will be replaced by Andrew Formica, the former co-CEO of Janus Henderson Group.

The plan had been for Slendebroek to step down at a later date, but the company said it had accelerated its succession plans in light of Formica’s availability “at this point in time”.

Formica was chief executive of Henderson Group between 2008 and its merger with Janus Capital in 2017, and co-CEO of the merged group alongside Dick Weil until Weil was made sole CEO last year. Formica remained with the company in an advisory role until the end of 2018. 

Slendebroek was appointed Jupiter CEO in 2014, and in a statement the company’s chairwoman, Liz Airey, hailed him as “the driving force” behind its diversification strategy. 

Hermes Investment Management – Carina Spitzkopf has been appointed a member of the £36bn asset manager’s global fixed income team as a director for private debt. Before joining Hermes, Spitzkopf was a director for UBS, where she covered leverage finance risk and portfolio management of the firm’s leveraged loan book in the EMEA region.

The asset manager’s stewardship and engagement team, Hermes EOS, also has a new addition. Kimberley Lewis has been appointed engagement director, focusing on enhancing the activities of Hermes EOS in North America and with a sector focus on the pharmaceutical industry.

Lewis was previously at Pfizer where she led the global corporate responsibility and social investment team. A US-qualified attorney, she has also served as counsel for a US senator and as a federal lobbyist. 

RAM Active Investments – The Swiss alternatives manager hired Tony Guida and Nicolas Mirjolet to its systematic research team. Guida joins from RPMI Railpen, where he was a senior quantitative portfolio manager. He has also worked at EDHEC Risk Scientific Beta and Unigestion, and is editor-in-chief of the Journal of Machine Learning in Finance.

Mirjolet was previously CIO at Tolomeo Capital, a specialist systematic asset manager he co-founded in 2011. He has also worked for Swissquant and a family office in Zurich.