ESG Investor’s weekly round-up of moves and appointments in the sustainable investing sector, including CPP Investments, CCLA, Vontobel, LeapFrog, Low Carbon, and Brown Advisory.
Richard Manley is the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board’s (CPP Investments) new Chief Sustainability Officer. Manley will be responsible for leading the further refinement and execution of the fund’s sustainable transition roadmap. He joined CPP Investments in 2019 as Head of Sustainable Investing, integrating ESG factors across the firm’s investment programmes. He will continue to lead the sustainable investing team. John Graham, CPP Investment’s President and CEO, said: “Our position on sustainability remains clear: we believe that organisations that effectively anticipate, manage and integrate sustainability-related factors that are material to their businesses are more likely to endure and create value over the long term. I am pleased that Richard will carry forward our efforts to maximise value by building and growing a portfolio with a focus on long-term performance.”
UK-based charity fund manager CCLA has continued to build its sustainability team through its recent hires of Dame Sara Thornton and Dr Martin Buttle. Thorton joins as Consultant on Modern Slavery and will be responsible for expanding CCLA’s ‘Find it, Fix it, Prevent it’ initiative to tackle modern slavery in investee companies’ supply chains. Thornton served a three-year term as the UK Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner until April this year and also currently holds the position of Professor of Practice in Modern Slavery Policy at Nottingham University Rights Lab. Buttle will be responsible for leading CCLA’s ‘Better Work’ stream, which is targeting fair and sustainable working conditions for companies’ labour forces that are aligned with the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. He joins from UK NGO ShareAction, where he was Head of Good Work. Peter Hugh Smith, CCLA’s CEO: “I am thrilled to welcome both Dame Sara and Martin to the CCLA team. This is about CCLA building an even more meaningful capability, strengthening our team of people that can make a genuine contribution to helping to solve problems in the real world. We really want to see other investors join us as signatories on Find it, Fix it, Prevent it to fight modern slavery and to get behind our other Better Work initiatives.”
Investment manager Vontobel has appointed Jean-Louis Nakamura as Head of its Sustainable Equities Boutique, which has 35 investment professionals based in Zurich, Milan and Hong Kong, and offers solutions in sustainable emerging market equities, Swiss equities, and impact and thematic investing. Nakamura has over 25 years of experience in public and private sectors and joins from Lombard Odier Investment Manager, where he spent 14 years and was CIO and CEO of the Asia Pacific and Hong Kong offices respectively. Nakamura also held the positions of Head of Multi Assets and Deputy Global CIO at the firm. Christel Rendu de Lint, Vontobel’s Deputy Head of Investments, said: “The appointment of Jean-Louis Nakamura reflects our commitment to our sustainable equities capabilities. His strong investment background and experience in managing investment teams will help us to further develop the boutique at a time when sustainable investing is entering a new and exciting phase, in which investors look for innovative and transparent solutions.”
Nakul Zaveri is joining London-based LeapFrog Investments as Partner and will be co-leading its new climate investment strategy, which aims to support companies and technologies enabling climate-related mitigation and adaptation for lower-income people. Zaveri has over two decades years of experience in climate investing and financial services. He was most recently Managing Partner at Relativity Investment Management, a sustainability-focused growth private equity fund group, investing in mid-market Indian businesses. Before this, he spent seven years at the Global Environment Fund, a private equity investor focused on the industrial technology, energy ecosystem, infrastructure, and resource efficiency sectors, where he was responsible for managing investment activity across India and Southeast Asia. Dr Andy Kuper, LeapFrog’s Founder and CEO, said: “Our goal is to give consumers in emerging markets a pathway to leapfrog to low-carbon consumption as they join the middle class. We want to enable them to access superior, more affordable, less polluting, safer, healthier, digital, and climate resilient products and services.”
Low Carbon, a UK-based global renewable company, has appointed Ed Shelton as Managing Director for Investments in North America. Shelton has a decade of experience in the industry and in his new role will lead Low Carbon’s efforts to scale renewable energy generation in US and Canadian markets, with a specific focus on wind, solar and storage. He joins from RWE Renewables where he held the position of Executive Vice President for Solar and Storage Development in North America. At RWE, Shelton led a team of 27, managed a solar and storage portfolio of more than 15 gigawatts (GW), and oversaw the development of a further 1.5 GW of projects that are now operational or under construction. Ed Colligan, Low Carbon’s Head of Americas, said: “Ed has a proven track record of helping international energy companies like ours scale up and extend clean, affordable energy to millions around the globe.”
Independent global investment management firm Brown Advisory has hired two new fixed income analysts for its Global Sustainable Fixed Income team in London. Yacine El-Mohri joins from BNP Paribas, where he was a Financials Credit Trading Desk Analyst, specialising in European banks and insurers. Eriko Miyazaki-Ross joins from Global Evolution, where she was an Emerging Markets Corporate Credit Portfolio Manager and UK Branch Manager. In their new roles, El-Mohri and Miyazaki-Ross will add further expertise to the firm’s team of fixed income and equity fundamental and ESG analysts. Logie Fitzwilliams, Brown Advisory’s Head of International Business and Global Head of Sales, said: “Yacine and Eriko bring with them a wealth of analytical experience from well recognised institutions, and it is clear their expertise will add yet further depth to our already accomplished and growing fixed income proposition which is seeing strong client demand.”
