PRI elects six new members to its Advisory Council

2 August 2011

| By Angela Welsh |

The Principles for Responsible Investment Initiative (PRI) has announced the election of six candidates to join its strategic governance body, the PRI Advisory Council.

The 2011 election follows the advisory council’s decision to broaden its traditionally asset-owner led governance structure to include non-asset owners.

The elected asset owners are: Else Bos, chief executive of investments at PFZW, the Netherlands’s second largest pension fund; and Priya Sara Mathur, a chair on the board of the California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS).

The non-asset owners elected to PRI’s Advisory Council are: Paul Abberly, chief executive of Aviva Investors London; Melissa Brown, director of Responsible Research; Ann Byrne, chief executive of the Australian Council of Superannuation Investors; and Luciane Ribeiro, executive officer Santander Asset Management Brasil.

In keeping with the rules around regional representation on the PRI Advisory Council, three candidates were automatically selected — Sopawadee Lertmanaschai, secretary general of the Government Pension Fund of Thailand; John Oliphant, head of actuarial and investments, Government Employers Pension Fund of South Africa; and Rene Sanda, chief investment officer of PREVI, a major Latin American pension fund.

“The new governance structure marks a significant change for PRI, one that will benefit from the diverse representation of our asset owner, investment manager and service partner signatories in helping PRI realise its goals,” PRI Advisory Council chair Wolfgang Engshuber said.

The PRI Advisory Council now consists of 16 members drawn from a global signatory base: the chair, two United Nations (UN) representatives (one from the UN Environmental Program and another from the UN Global Compact), nine asset owners from Europe, North America, Asia, Oceania, Africa and the Middle East and Latin America, two investment managers and two professional service providers.