People Moves: Lombard Odier Hires Senior Sustainability Duo

Lepage joins Lombard Odier on 19 August from biomaterials corporate Stora Enso. As group vice president for M&A and corporate finance, she oversaw the company’s sustainable investment activities.

Detailhandel – Sasja Keijmel has started in the newly created position of actuarial head at Detailhandel, the €24bn Dutch pension fund for the retail sector. He will also focus on the new pensions contract, to be introduced as part of the Netherlands’ pension system reform.

Keijmel joins from consultancy Mercer Netherlands where he was an actuarial adviser for several company and industry-wide pension funds during the past 19 years, advising Detailhandel since 2012. Prior to his job at Mercer, Keijmel worked at Heijnis and Koelman, a predecessor of consultancy Aon Hewitt, for six years.

Bibliotheken – Ernst Hagen has started as member of the supervisory board of the €2.5bn Dutch pension fund for public libraries, Openbare Bibliotheken. Hagen is also an internal supervisor at the industry-wide schemes for Rhine and inland shipping (Rijn- en Binnenvaart) and the merchant navy (Koopvaardij), and is a board member at the Pensioenfonds Equens.

Since 2011, he worked at asset manager BMO Global Asset Management in several positions, including director, portfolio manager and delegated chief investment officer. Prior to this he was head of asset management at the €11bn sector scheme for the hospitality industry (Horeca & Catering).

Barings – Stewart Russell has been hired as head of institutional solutions to lead Barings’ newly formed institutional solutions business. He will report to Barings’ head of global markets, Michael Freno. Ann Bryant has also joined the firm as head of insurance solutions within the new business unit, reporting to Russell. 

Freno said: “We are excited to welcome Stewart and Ann to the Barings team as we set out to build an institutional solutions business, strengthening our current partnerships with institutional investors globally.” 

Russell was most recently a portfolio manager at Moore Capital Management , but has also worked at RBS Greenwich Capital Markets and as co-chief investment officer at Fischer Francis Trees & Watts. Bryant joins from Reinsurance Group America where she served as a senior portfolio manager. Before that was she was vice president for capital markets at Summit Strategies Group, and principal at Mercer.

Eurizon – The asset management company of the Intesa Sanpaolo Group has established two new units in its investment department, one dedicated to corporate governance and sustainability and other for fundamental research and analysis activities.

Simone Chelini has been the head of the corporate governance and sustainability unit since the beginning of June, leading the team of specialists who have already been managing and developing the company’s work in relation to environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) issues. Chelini was most recently coordinator of the management committee of Assogestioni, Italy’s asset management association, from 2016 to February of this year.

Eurizon said it decided to centralise its activities in these areas within the investment department to “be more influential and decisive in its support of developing a sustainable business system to create long-term value for its customers”.

Also in June, the asset manager established the fundamental research unit headed by Francesco Sedati, who was previously at JP Morgan Asset Management.

Separately, Guido Crivellaro has joined the Italian equity team from Symphonia SGR, where he was head of equity portfolios for Italy.

Tommaso Corcos, CEO of Eurizon, said the asset manager was “deploying more and more resources to some of the business areas we believe will be most sustainable in the future”.

Hymans Robertson – The pensions consultancy has promoted Michael Ambery to lead its master trust research and manage the company’s relationships with defined contribution product providers. He has been at Hymans Robertson since 2006, having joined from KPMG’s pensions team. 

Principal Global Investors – The US asset manager has appointed Christoph Salzmann as head of distribution in Switzerland, a move it said was part of its growth strategy in the country. He previously worked for BNP Paribas Asset Management in Zurich. PGI opened its Swiss office in 2016. 

Savills Investment Management – The global real estate investment manager has appointed Pierre Escande as head of investment for France, Belgium and Luxembourg, responsible for originating new investment opportunities in what Savills said was an increasingly active market for the manager. 

Escande joins Savills IM from AEW where he was a fund manager in charge of the development and management of major institutional client portfolios. Before that he was an associate director at Invesco. 

KGAL  – Christian Schulte Eistrup has been appointed head of international institutional business as the real assets manager seeks to further expand its presence within international investment markets.

He joins from Optimum Asset Management, where he was a managing director and a member of its management and investment committees. Previous roles include head of the EMEA region for BlackRock’s real estate arm.