Noticeboard PEOPLE MOVES


RPMI Railpen, which manages £25bn of assets for the railways pension schemes, has named Steven Tirrell as its head of strategy and planning. In this newly created role, Tirrell will de- velop and implement strategies for the in- vestment business, deliver departmental business plans and measure the effective- ness of change initiatives. His CV includes senior roles at PwC, Morgan Stanley and Citi. Caroline Escott is leaving the PLSA to take a pension stewardship role at an undis- closed organisation.


Escott, who was promoted to senior policy lead for investment and stewardship in March, has quit the association after three years.


LGPS Central has promoted Gordon Ross to chief investment officer. Ross joined the £45bn investment pool for eight local authority pension schemes in the Midlands in February 2018 as investment di- rector for fixed income, before becoming deputy chief investment officer a year later.


He has almost four decades of trading and portfolio management experience at Morgan Grenfell, Lombard Odier, JP Mor- gan Chase, HSBC, Invesco and Deutsche Bank. Ross also had a short spell at the Financial Conduct Authority. Elizabeth Renshaw-Ames is the new chair of trustees at Aviva Master Trust. The former chief executive of HSBC’s UK pension plan has replaced Colin Richardson, who remains a trustee of the scheme. Tesco Pension Investment, the asset man- ager for the supermarket’s retirement scheme, has confirmed that chief execu- tive and chief investment officer Steven Daniels is to retire in March.


Daniels, who has held the joint roles since 2012, will be replaced as chief executive by Danny Firth, while Jenny Buck becomes chief investment officer. Firth is currently deputy chief executive, while Buck moves from head of private markets to become Daniels’ deputy in preparation for her new role. Local Pensions Partnership (LPP) has ap- pointed Jo Darbyshire as managing direc-


CALENDAR Upcoming


portfolio institutional roundtables: July


Responsible investing


September Factor-based investing


October Multi asset


November Emerging market debt


December-January Outlook 2021


tor of its new administration service, LPP Administration.


Darbyshire, who was previously direc- tor of pensions administration at the local government pool, will focus on improving operational efficiency for LPP’s more than 600,000 members. Ensuring effective communications and managing robust risk and data management systems are also part of her remit.


NOTICEBOARD


Defined benefit scheme insurer Pension Insurance Corporation (PIC) has lent £277m to renewable energy investor Q-Energy to refinance the debt secured against eight of its solar parks in Spain.


The solar parks have the capacity to pow- er thousands of homes and have been op- erating for almost 10 years. The rate of in- terest on the debt, which matures in 2041, has not been disclosed.


This follows the £190m Q-Energy bor- rowed from PIC earlier this year against 21 solar parks, which are also in Spain. PIC has also issued £75m of debt to Tri- dent Housing Association. The loan will refinance the Midlands- based housing association’s debt, giving it


10 | portfolio institutional July 2020 | issue 94


an opportunity to increase its stock of al- most 4,000 homes.


The loan, which is secured against some of Trident’s properties, matures in 31- and 33-years’ time and has been designed to match PIC’s cashflow needs.


The insurer has invested more than £2bn in social housing. Railway pension schemes investment manager RPMI Railpen is among a group of pension funds that, along with renewa- bles investor Greencoat Capital, has bought Sleaford Renewable Energy Plant. The biomass plant in Lincolnshire was sold by Glennmont Partners for an undis- closed sum. London CIV, the investment pool for the capital’s 32 local council pension funds, has appointed Aviva Investors to manage its new Inflation Plus fund.


The £107m fund targets inflation- linked returns by investing in real as- sets, primarily property and ground rents, and has been funded by the pen- sion schemes of Bexley and Redbridge councils. 3i’s pension scheme’s liabilities are now fully insured after completing a £650m buy-in with Legal & General. The deal matches the benefits of around 280 of the private equity group’s pensioners and 570 of its deferred members. This is the third buy-in that 3i has completed with Legal & General. And finally, the Unomedical Pension Plan has completed a £10m buyout with Aviva in a deal that insures the liabilities of all its 65 members. The scheme is sponsored by medical product and technology com- pany ConvaTec.


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