It&nbsp;follows a&nbsp;tough year for&nbsp;the&nbsp;industry, with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine prompting huge outflows from equity funds, while rising inflation and interest rates have hit revenues and profits. There has also been increased scrutiny of the sector, particularly of ESG funds as managers get to grips with the EU’s Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation. Despite these challenges, the industry has remained resilient and the leaders recognised on&nbsp;FN’s&nbsp;list have continued to oversee strong businesses. Fund management is perhaps faring better than other parts of finance on diversity, with six female CEOs and two others who lead substantial businesses lines on the list. However, it still does not hit the 50/50 mark when looking at the gender split of&nbsp;leaders&nbsp;in the industry.

Abou-Jaoudé - Cummings

Naïm Abou-Jaoudé, the incoming chief executive of New York Life Investment Management, has been the CEO of one of its subsidiaries, Candriam, for the past 16 years. During that time, the firm has bolstered its reputation as being one of the first movers in ESG, having launched its first suite of sustainable strategies in 1996. In 2014, Abou-Jaoudé helped oversee New York Life’s acquisition of Dexia Asset Management — Candriam’s former incarnation. Since then, the business has more than doubled assets under management to $160bn through a combination of new products, geographic expansion and acquisitions. Its ESG expertise held it in good stead during the market turbulence of 2022. Candriam was singled out by Morningstar as one of the top 20 asset gatherers in Europe during the first half of the year, amid strong appetite for sustainable investment funds. Despite a challenging market where other asset managers have put new hires on hold or reduced headcount, Candriam has continued to grow, with around 100 additions last year. Under Abou-Jaoudé’s leadership, Candriam decided to donate 10% of the fees it generated from certain sustainable and thematic strategies to social impact initiatives — it gave €3m in 2021 through its philanthropic arm, The Candriam Institute for Sustainable Development. He takes up his new job and becomes chair of&nbsp;Candriam’s board in May. Away from Candriam, Abou-Jaoudé is president of the European Fund and&nbsp;Asset Management Association.&nbsp;

Valérie Baudson is one of the most senior women in the European asset management sector, having become chief executive of Amundi in May 2021. She&nbsp;joined Europe’s largest asset manager in 2007 to create its exchange traded fund, index and smart beta business from scratch. She then oversaw subsidiary CPR Asset Management before taking on the top job at Amundi. Since then, Baudson has overseen several key milestones at the company. These include its landmark €825m acquisition of Lyxor in 2021, which propelled Amundi to become Europe’s second-largest ETF provider, and Amundi Technology’s acquisition the same year of Finventum, a fintech company that established Austrian robo-advisory platform Savity Vermögensverwaltung and also offers digital asset management services. Baudson spearheaded Amundi’s three-year ESG plan in December 2021, which is designed to strengthen its responsible investment offering and tackle climate change by engaging with more than 1,000 companies. As part of the plan, Amundi said it would&nbsp;develop a new net-zero range of actively managed funds while broadening ESG ETFs to account for 40% of its total offering by 2025. Baudson also led the creation of the Amundi Institute, a new business division with around 60 staff, which brings together the asset manager’s research, market strategy and asset allocation advisory activities. ﻿Outside Amundi, Baudson is a member of&nbsp;the Association Française de&nbsp;la Gestion financière, which represents and defends the interests of asset management professionals. She is also a member of Paris EUROPLACE, the organisation responsible for&nbsp;promoting the city globally as a financial hub.&nbsp;

Chief executive

Hortense Bioy came to fund management research in&nbsp;a roundabout way. She started her career at Societe Generale in investment banking and then spent time as a TV presenter for&nbsp;Bloomberg’s French-speaking channel. She says her current role combines the two worlds — she uses her finance background and her interviewing skills to glean information about fund managers to inform her research. Bioy joined Morningstar in 2010, covering exchange traded and index funds. She added ESG research in 2017, taking on a formal role as head of sustainability research in Emea and Asia Pacific a year later, before moving to a global role in 2021. In just a few years, there has been a lot of change in the sector as the focus on ESG has intensified. Bioy says that during that time, the definition of what passes as a sustainable investment has narrowed as investor expectations have risen. The introduction of the EU’s Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation has also dominated discussions on the topic. Bioy leads a team in the UK, the US and Australia that has grown from just two members a couple of years ago to seven. Alongside her managerial and research tasks, much of her time is spent speaking to the press and at conferences. A self-confessed gym addict, Bioy also has three children who take up much&nbsp;of her time outside the office. A French national, she lived in Hong Kong at the start of her career and has also spent time travelling in Asia and South America, where she learnt Spanish.

Global director of sustainability research

Stephen Cohen has worked at BlackRock since 2011,&nbsp;joining the US-headquartered asset manager&nbsp;from Nomura, where he was global head&nbsp;of&nbsp;equity-linked strategy. He was named head of BlackRock’s Emea operations&nbsp;in&nbsp;April 2021, taking&nbsp;on&nbsp;leadership&nbsp;for one&nbsp;of&nbsp;its biggest regions. He&nbsp;sits on&nbsp;BlackRock’s global executive&nbsp;committee and chairs its Emea executive committee. Cohen, who is responsible for some 6,000 people across 28 offices, was previously in&nbsp;charge of BlackRock’s index investments in the&nbsp;region and oversaw its relationships with wealth&nbsp;management firms and platforms. Also under his remit was BlackRock’s iShares exchange traded funds business&nbsp;—&nbsp;the largest&nbsp;in Europe with around $676bn of assets.&nbsp;ETF assets doubled during his time&nbsp;in charge. Prior to this, Cohen led iShares’ fixed income&nbsp;index investment group. ﻿Outside work,&nbsp;Cohen has been learning to&nbsp;play drums.

Head of Emea

Chris Cummings is one of the most recognisable trade&nbsp;body bosses in the City. The director general of&nbsp;the Association of Independent Financial Advisers for seven years, he became the founding CEO of lobby group TheCityUK in 2010. He then took the top job at the Investment Association in 2016, where he now leads 95 people across offices in London and Brussels in engaging with senior politicians and regulators to champion the UK’s £10tn fund management sector. Not long after joining the association, Cummings said he recognised that the sector needed to “get used to&nbsp;life on the public square”, claiming that legislators would develop more interest in fund management as it grew larger. During his time at the helm, the industry has come under more scrutiny, particularly in the wake of the Neil Woodford scandal in 2019, when some 300,000 retail investors were trapped in the former star fund manager’s flagship product. The sector was also thrown into the spotlight last year following the liability-driven investments crisis, which brought some UK pension funds to the&nbsp;brink of collapse. Much of Cummings’ interaction with the government has focused on championing the&nbsp;asset management sector during the UK’s Brexit negotiations with the EU, ensuring that the industry maintains its “mission critical” relationship with key EU member states such&nbsp;as Luxembourg and the&nbsp;Republic of Ireland.

Fleming - Pierri

Campbell Fleming started his career in the asset management industry during the 1990s. He was named chief executive of AssetCo in September 2021, overseeing the deals company set up by his former colleague, the fund management veteran Martin Gilbert. Australia‑born Fleming was previously head of the UK business at JPMorgan Asset Management, overseeing growth of assets from $6bn to $52bn. Then, as CEO for the Emea region at Columbia Threadneedle Investments, he more than&nbsp;doubled its assets under management. Before joining AssetCo, Fleming was global head of distribution and marketing at Standard Life Aberdeen (now Abrdn). AssetCo has experienced significant growth in the short time that Fleming has been at its helm, announcing several notable deals as part of its strategy to grow by making acquisitions. Since the business was formed, it has acquired full or majority stakes in Saracen Fund Managers, Rize ETF, River and Mercantile, Revera and SVM. Fleming sits on the boards of AssetCo, River and Mercantile, and Rize. He has also been chair and a director of social impact investment platform The Big Exchange since 2020. In addition, Fleming is on the City of&nbsp;London Corporation’s Global Investment Futures committee, which was established to promote the UK’s green and sustainable investment management offering internationally. ﻿Outside AssetCo, he works with a sustainable coffee plantation in Panama that promotes social and environmental principles locally.

If anyone can be said to be synonymous with exchange traded funds, it is Deborah Fuhr. She has been involved in the industry in Europe from inception, leading the ETF business at Morgan Stanley before moving to Barclays Global Investors in 2008, just before it was acquired by BlackRock — a move that doubled the US fund manager’s assets. There, she produced widely read&nbsp;reports detailing inflows and outflows from exchange traded products globally. She has continued that work at consultancy and data firm ETFGI, which she founded in 2012. ETFGI distributes its monthly updates on the market to approximately 10,000 people around the world and holds regular conferences — it hosted six last year, four virtual and two hybrid. Fuhr is on the boards of&nbsp;ETF providers Syntax and Renaissance, as well as&nbsp;of Women in ETFs — the ETF industry’s first women’s group, which she co-founded in 2014. Last year, she also became a board member at WisdomTree, after activist investors called for the&nbsp;addition of new&nbsp;independent&nbsp;directors.

Founder and managing partner

Peter Harrison has been CEO of Schroders since 2016,&nbsp;during which time it has become the UK’s largest listed fund management group, with assets under management rising to some £773bn at the end of June 2022. Schroders has struck several deals under Harrison’s watch, one of the most notable being a 2018 partnership with Lloyds Banking Group to launch a wealth management venture. Other deals overseen by Harrison have aided its expansion into private assets, including its purchase of private equity investor Adveq in 2017 and renewable infrastructure market specialist Greencoat Capital in 2022. Last year, the firm completed the purchase of River and Mercantile’s solutions business, as part of Schroders’ push to expand its fiduciary management&nbsp;capabilities. Harrison, who is also a budding novelist, was previously global head of equities at the&nbsp;fund manager, having rejoined from RWC Partners in 2013.&nbsp;He started his career at Schroders, before working at various investment managers.

Marco Morelli issued a stark warning in 2021 for some&nbsp;of the biggest climate laggards across AXA Investment Managers’ portfolios: change or face divestment. Since the start of this year, the asset management unit of French insurer AXA has also implemented a “three strikes and you’re out” policy against the worst polluters. As well as his climate initiatives, Paris-based Morelli has made several other changes at the €817bn firm since becoming executive chair in September 2020. Last July, he oversaw the creation of AXA IM Prime, a new private markets focused division. Two months later, AXA IM announced the launch of an ETF platform that will focus on actively managed ESG ETFs. Prior to AXA IM, Morelli worked at Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena as CEO and general manager. He was also CEO of Bank of America Merrill Lynch Italy. ﻿A published author, the father of four is also co-founder and vice-chair of Fondazione Don Gino Rigoldi, an Italian non-profit organisation that searches for professional and work opportunities for young people.&nbsp;

Executive chair

Sandro Pierri spent the bulk of his career at Pioneer&nbsp;Investments before joining BNP Paribas Asset Management in 2016. He became CEO of the business in July 2021 and wasted no time implementing changes once he was in the top job. Last year, the business outlined its strategic ambitions for the next three years, including a plan to have 90% of its open-ended funds classified as Article 8 or Article 9 under the EU’s Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation. Pierri’s plan for the firm includes defining a clear pathway to net-zero emissions for its assets under management and outperforming its nearest rivals in terms of growth. He has also kick-started work for BNP Paribas AM to innovate in areas such as artificial intelligence, data, natural language processing and algorithmic portfolio optimisation. Pierri has been keen to highlight the potential disruption asset management is facing, writing in&nbsp;Financial News&nbsp;last year that change was being driven “by a younger generation that demands more focus on&nbsp;sustainability&nbsp;and more impact for their savings”.

Pozezenac - Scrimgeour

Sylvia Pozezanac is well-known in the investment consultancy sector. She started her career at a predecessor of Willis Towers Watson in the US more than 30 years ago. She left in 2013 to become a senior managing director at Prudential Financial, where she worked with C-suite clients. She then crossed the Atlantic in 2019 to head up Mercer in the UK. There, she led the integration of JLT’s employee benefits business following its acquisition by Mercer. She became CEO of Redington in April last year, while it was in the process of targeting expansion in existing and new markets across the UK and Europe. Since her arrival, the firm has become the first UK investment consultant to achieve B Corp certification, in recognition of its social and environmental impact. It has also been picking up some significant mandates, including as&nbsp;consultant for Centrica’s £10bn pension scheme.&nbsp;

Dame Anne Richards has been in charge of Fidelity&nbsp;International since the end of 2018, but even&nbsp;before that, she had made a name for herself in fund management through high-profile roles at&nbsp;Aberdeen Asset Management and M&amp;G Investments. She was awarded a CBE for services to&nbsp;finance in 2015. Finance is her&nbsp;second career, having started life as a research fellow at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research. She made the jump into finance in 1992 as a research analyst at Alliance Capital. Dame Anne later became chief investment officer at Edinburgh Fund Managers, which was acquired by Aberdeen Asset Management in 2003, where she took up the same role. She was named CEO of&nbsp;M&amp;G Investments in 2016. ﻿One of the few senior women in the investment industry, Dame Anne has been committed to improving diversity in the sector and beyond. She is an ambassador of Women on Boards UK and of the 30% Club.&nbsp;

Andrea Rossi was named chief executive of M&amp;G in September 2022. Within hours of his appointment being announced, Rossi ruled out a break-up of the British fund management group following criticisms around having a combined asset manager and retail and savings business. Rossi is no stranger to the City, having been CEO of&nbsp;AXA Investment Managers for&nbsp;six years before stepping down in December 2019. During his time at AXA, assets under management increased by 55% to €800bn, while money managed on behalf of external clients more than doubled. After leaving AXA IM, Rossi worked as a senior adviser to Boston Consulting Group. He also co-founded REsustain, a&nbsp;firm focused on reducing the carbon intensity of commercial property, where he remains a non-executive director. The father of one told&nbsp;Financial News&nbsp;in a 2019 interview that if he were not a fund management CEO, he would most likely be running a&nbsp;boutique hotel in Tuscany and producing olive oil.

The Financial Conduct Authority’s director of environment, social and governance, Sacha Sadan has wasted no time since he took up the newly created position in April 2021 in implementing a series of proposals designed to tackle “greenwashing” across the financial services sector. His initiatives include introducing labels to make it easier for individual investors to compare sustainable investment products; he has also led the formation of an ESG advisory committee to help inform the FCA’s work in this area. But Sadan was well-known in the sector for his ESG credentials even before he&nbsp;joined the FCA, having worked in finance for almost 30 years. He began his career as a graduate trainee in 1995 at the Universities Superannuation Scheme — one of the UK’s biggest pension funds. It was while he was at USS that he began to get noticed for asking company boards probing questions, at a time when corporate governance was not yet a mainstream investment issue. In 2011, he became the director of investment stewardship at Legal and General Investment Management, the UK’s largest asset manager, and it was soon after his arrival that he scored one of his biggest corporate governance achievements. That year, Japanese camera-maker Olympus sacked its CEO, Michael Woodford, after he confronted its board about payments made in relation to an historic acquisition. It was later revealed that several board members were involved in a $1.7bn accounting cover-up. As a result of Sadan’s efforts, LGIM said it would vote against Japanese boards where there was a lack of independence or&nbsp;progress to address the balance. ﻿Sadan received recognition for his ESG work in January this year from the Alliance Manchester Business School, which&nbsp;has appointed him an honorary professor of&nbsp;ESG and investment risk.

Director of ESG

Michelle Scrimgeour has been at the helm of the UK’s largest asset manager since July 2019, during which time she has led its global expansion. In&nbsp;the&nbsp;past year this has included making hires in&nbsp;Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy and&nbsp;Germany, as well as opening a new office in Switzerland. At&nbsp;its half-year results in June 2022, the fund manager saw a&nbsp;slight dip in assets to just under&nbsp;£1.3tn; however, external net inflows more than doubled year-on-year, at least half of which came from international investors. Scrimgeour has wider influence across the fund management industry as deputy chair of the Investment Association and as a member of the Financial Conduct Authority’s Practitioner Panel. She has led various climate initiatives at LGIM, with the investment house co-founding the Net Zero Asset Managers Initiative. She&nbsp;also co-chaired the COP26 Business Leaders Group. Prior to taking the top job at LGIM, Scrimgeour was Emea head at Columbia Threadneedle Investments, having previously held senior roles at M&amp;G Investments and BlackRock. She is a keen gardener and lover of the outdoors.&nbsp;

Sloan - Versey

Jane Sloan oversees BlackRock’s $1tn-plus European iShares and index investment business — the largest exchange traded funds operation in the region. ﻿She joined BlackRock in 2015 and has held several senior positions within iShares, including head of Emea and Apac iShares Capital Markets and head of sales in Emea to wealth and retail clients. She took on her current role in April 2021 and has continued to grow the unit since then through new product launches, hires and partnerships with third parties. Sloan is passionate about diversity and is involved in several internal initiatives, including being a coach for the firm’s Taking the Stage programme, which helps women to develop their public speaking skills. She is also an active member of BlackRock’s Women’s Initiative &amp; Allies Network. An avid sports player in her spare time, she enjoys tennis, football and water sports, as well as travelling with her family.

Emea head of iShares and index investments

Hanneke Smits has held a series of senior roles in private equity and fund management, taking up her post as CEO of BNY Mellon Investment Management in October 2020. The firm manages $1.8tn and Smits has oversight of&nbsp;seven investment subsidiaries, including UK-based fixed income specialist Insight Investment and Brazil-headquartered ARX Investimentos. Prior to BNY Mellon IM, she was head of its subsidiary, Newton Investment Management, and had worked in the buyout industry at Adam Street Partners and Pantheon Ventures. Throughout her career, she has been committed to improving diversity in the industry. She was a co-founder of Level20, which was set up to support women in the private equity sector, and in February was named global chair of the 30% Club, which aims to improve gender diversity in the world’s largest companies. Smits told&nbsp;Financial News&nbsp;following her appointment at the 30% Club that she feels that it is part of her role to champion women and be an advocate.&nbsp;

Patrick Thomson began his career in the City aged 28, following a five-year stint in the British Army. Since then, he has risen to become chief executive of JPMorgan’s asset management unit in Emea — a business that oversees close to $440bn and has more than 1,700 staff. In September 2022, during a year of severe turbulence for the sector, Thomson was named chair of the Investment Association. He is also a member of the Treasury’s asset management task force, a CEO-level group established to facilitate dialogue between the government, industry and regulators. Thomson has made diversity and inclusion a priority under his leadership. Last year, JPMorgan AM took up membership of Black Women in Asset Management; it has also hosted and taken part in&nbsp;several events supporting the hiring and retention of Black women in the sector. ﻿Outside work, the father of five is a keen beekeeper and cider maker.

CEO, Europe, Middle East and Africa

Rory Tobin is considered to be one of the main architects of iShares’ success. He spent six years there, growing exchange traded fund assets across Emea from $8bn to $85bn. The co-CEO of the global&nbsp;iShares business while it was still owned by Barclays Global Investors, Tobin jointly led the discussions that resulted in an agreement to sell the unit to CVC Capital Partners — a deal that BlackRock scuppered in 2009 when it secured the winning bid for iShares. ﻿Tobin left in 2010 and worked briefly at Barclays Wealth &amp; Investment Management, before joining State Street Global Advisors in 2014 to oversee its ETF business, SPDR, in Europe and Asia-Pacific. He&nbsp;then became global co-head then sole lead for the ETF business before being promoted to also head SSGA in Emea. ﻿﻿Tobin&nbsp;is also a member of the SSGA executive&nbsp;management group.

Head of Emea and head of global SPDR ETFs

Mark Versey took over as Aviva Investors’ CEO in January 2021, having previously been CIO for its real assets division. Versey was only in the role for around six months when Aviva Investors announced it would shift its focus towards areas where it has a competitive edge and is winning business. Real assets, credit, multi-asset and wealth and retirement solutions were among the areas identified, as well as sustainable investing. Versey has been vocal about what the asset manager expects of the companies in which it&nbsp;invests. In&nbsp;February 2023, he wrote to 1,600 firms, telling them it would be inappropriate to award bumper pay rises to executives during the cost-of-living crisis. Last year, he said Aviva Investors would vote to remove directors of companies that fail to live up to its expectations on sustainability. Versey has also used his status as the boss of one of the UK’s best-known fund groups to agitate for wider change. In 2021, he called for G7 and G20 nations to make a series of reforms to the international financial architecture to enable the global financial system to&nbsp;tackle the climate crisis in an effective and&nbsp;cohesive way. Last year, he said global regulators should join together to create a global transition plan for finance that would seek to mobilise private&nbsp;capital&nbsp;to&nbsp;avert&nbsp;the&nbsp;looming climate crisis.

Twenty Most Influential in Fund Management 2023