Investors offer advice to ministers for U.K.’s low-carbon ambitions
Bloomberg
Eight asset owners have written to Prime Minister Boris Johnson and other ministers to offer their help in determining how the financial sector can contribute to the U.K. s efforts to shift to a net-zero economy.
Signatories represent more than £230 billion ($314.7 billion) in assets and were brought together by the U.N.-supported Principles for Responsible Investment. Climate change is recognised as the most significant global risk facing investors, the letter said. For our beneficiaries, it threatens their livelihoods, their retirement savings, their health, their quality of life. Even a short delay in implementing the necessary policies increases the likelihood of a disorderly transition, threatening beneficiaries savings and the resilience of the financial system.
Local Pensions Partnership gains new real estate head Jan 21, 2021 By Funds Europe
Louise Warden has become head of real estate within the private markets group at Local Pensions Partnership Investments (LPPI), a UK manager for the pooled assets of three pension funds.
Warden has been promoted internally and will manage LPPI’s real estate portfolio with “ambitious asset management and capital deployment objectives”.
Reporting to Simon Davy, head of private markets, Warden has managed property portfolios for West Yorkshire Pension Fund and worked for the Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund.
At LPPI she was most recently a real estate portfolio manager, joining in August 2019.
Mercer –
Ashok Gupta has been named chair of Mercer’s UK board. Selected for his extensive board and executive experience in the financial services industry, across asset management, wealth management and the pensions segments, Gupta will also chair the risk committee and the nominations committee.
An entrepreneur with over 40 years of experience in the UK insurance and financial services industry, Gupta has held a number of senior executive, advisor and actuarial positions during his career.
He chaired a Pension & Lifetime Savings Association taskforce that recommended superfunds, defined benefit consolidators for which there is now an interim regulatory regime. Gupta was also deputy chair of a Bank of England working group on procyclicality by pension funds and insurance companies.
UK asset owners urge government for increased climate action
Major UK asset owners including the BT pension scheme have called on the government to take increased climate action to protect investments and beneficiaries.
In two letters addressed to prime minister Boris Johnson and the secretary of transport Grant Shapps, the asset owners highlighted that climate change is recognised as the most significant global risk facing investors.
“It threatens their livelihoods, their retirement savings, their health, their quality of life. Even a short delay in implementing the necessary policies increases the likelihood of a disorderly transition, threatening beneficiaries’ savings and the resilience of the financial system,” they stated.
By Susanna Rust2020-12-17T13:53:00+00:00
The London Pensions Fund Authority (LPFA) is investing £100m (€109m) in the London-focussed investment fund it and two local authority pension pools are launching.
London CIV has teamed up with Local Pensions Partnership (LPP) and LPFA to create the fund, which will focus on investment opportunities in the UK capital in residential property – specifically build-to-rent – and affordable housing, community regeneration, digital infrastructure, and clean energy.
The targeted offering for the fund – The London Fund – is £300m.
“Further material commitments from several London CIV client funds could see a second close in 2021 to bring the fund to capacity,” the fund partners said in an announcement.