In London Dan Raghoonundon, ESG Research Lead; Charles Devereux, ESG Research Analyst; Olivia Jones, Junior ESG Research Analyst; Jesse Verheijen, ESG Data Analyst; and Bhaskar Sastry, ESG Content Manager will join; while in Denver, Blake Bennett joins the Team as Governance and Stewardship Analyst.

These new external appointees will support Paul LaCoursiere in driving the integration of ESG practices across the firm’s business and strategies.  They come in addition to recent internal moves; in June Adrienn Sarandi moved from an ESG role in the Janus Henderson Fixed Income Team, to take up the newly created role as Head of ESG Strategy and Development.

Meanwhile, Xiaoyi Luo has recently moved from a front office role, to join Paul’s team as an ESG Research Analyst; while Charlotte Nisbet has become an ESG Research Analyst, having previously worked in a similar role internally.  In addition, there are hires planned for more Stewardship and Governance roles over the next few months.

Commenting on the appointments, Paul LaCoursiere, Global Head of ESG Investments at Janus Henderson Investors said, “I am very pleased to welcome Dan, Blake, Charles, Olivia, Jesse and Bhaskar to the ESG Investment Team at Janus Henderson. ESG has been a core part of the business for many years and is embedded into our operating model; I am thrilled that we can continue to build our ESG offering with some of the best talent in the sector and the team will be a hub of specialist technical expertise on ESG Investment Research. Janus Henderson has an ambitious strategy to further evolve our ESG integration and support investors with data, tools, and analytics and best in class reporting.  These appointments represent a big step forward in delivering this goal.”

Enrique Chang, Chief Investment Officer of Janus Henderson Investors added, “The ESG Investment Team at Janus Henderson is integral to our business strategy and is key to maintaining the firm’s position as an innovator. We are keen to enhance and grow our sustainable investing business and these new appointments will help us achieve that goal.”

Dan Raghoonundon returns to Janus Henderson after concluding a three-year PhD in Finance at the Rotterdam School of Management. Previously, he was a portfolio manager in the Emerging Markets Equities team at Janus Henderson Investors. As ESG Research Lead, Dan will steer the team’s efforts to establish and build a hub of specialist technical expertise on ESG investment research at Janus Henderson. The team will be responsible for contributing to portfolios across Equities, Fixed Income and Multi-Asset.

The ESG Investment Team is strengthened by the appointments of Charles Devereaux, ESG Corporate Research Analyst and Olivia Jones, Junior ESG Corporate Research Analyst. Charles joins Janus Henderson from Aviva Investors, where he was an ESG Sector Analyst in investment management. Prior to this, Charles spent a year as an ESG Solutions analyst and Corporate Strategy Analyst at Aviva Investors. Olivia joins from Kukua, a specialist ESG, Sustainability and Climate consultancy where she worked as an ESG and Sustainability Analyst. Charles and Olivia will conduct independent and scalable thematic, industry and sovereign research to provide support to investment teams across all asset classes, with a particular focus on equity and credit analysts and portfolio managers.

Two additions to the ESG Investment Team will also strengthen Janus Henderson’s specialist technical expertise on ESG data and applications of ESG considerations. Jesse Verheijen joins Janus Henderson as an ESG Data Analyst from Aviva Investors. For the past two years, he worked as a data scientist in the Aviva Investors Transformation team and, prior to that, as a senior risk consultant at EY. Jesse will work closely with the Head of ESG Strategy & Development and the investment teams across asset classes to further integrate ESG data, research, analysis and stewardship into the firm’s investment processes. Bhaskar Sastry, ESG Content Manager, joins from State Street Global Advisors where he has worked since 2019 as an ESG Content Specialist. He will focus on creating and managing content on the firm’s ESG approach.

Finally, the appointment of Blake Bennett in Janus Henderson’s Denver office, demonstrates the global reach of the ESG Investment Team. Blake Bennett joins Janus Henderson as Governance and Stewardship Analyst and is based in Denver; Blake was previously an Operations and Policy Analyst at the State of Oregon’s Department of Environmental Quality and gained his PhD from Johns Hopkins University in Environmental Health Sciences.  In his newly created role, Blake supports our investment teams across the world, focusing on corporate governance issues, including voting, and analysis of environmental and social issues, helping inform the team’s collaborative company engagement.

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Paul LaCoursiere

Janus Henderson has announced it will launch a new series of reports investigating decarbonisation and the part governments, corporates, capital markets, and asset managers need to play to facilitate further decarbonisation across the world.

At the World Climate Summit in Glasgow on Monday, Janus Henderson convened a panel to discuss whether decarbonisation could be an opportunity for emerging markets, rather than a challenge to mitigate.

Paul LaCoursiere Global Head of ESG Investments at Janus Henderson who moderated Monday’s panel said: “Our panel was the jumping off point. There are success stories like Chile where markets are already in the midst of their own decarbonisation journey. Our reports will set out the role that needs to be played by governments, corporates, capital markets, and asset managers to facilitate further decarbonisation. The asset management industry is hungry to play its part in resolving the existential risk of climate change, but it cannot solve this problem alone. Our new series of reports will outline the role we all need to play in helping emerging markets decarbonise.”

For the purposes of the report, emerging markets will be divided into four regions: Eastern Europe; Africa and the Middle East; Latin America and Asia. The first of the four regional reports will be published in the first quarter of 2022.

The panel culminated with some bold conclusions:

• Dr Nina Seega, Research Director at the Cambridge Institute of Sustainable Leadership (CISL): “Financial markets participants and climate scientists must recognise the gap that exists between their thinking about the carbon transition. As an economic community, we tend to think the future will be linear and will broadly follow the pattern of the past. Climate scientists think in terms of disruptive transition. While financial analysts may worry about the effect that the slow but steady carbon transition will have on the net present value of legacy assets, a climate scientist would ask: what happens to the value of an asset under a quick and potentially painful disruptive transition from climate change? Overall, this was an encouraging COP but now I want to see more ambitious Nationally Determined Contributions from governments.”
• Mark Cutifani, Chief Executive Officer at Anglo American Plc, said: “COP26 has firmly shifted the conversation from the “Why?” to “How?” around decarbonisation. We all understand that we have a collective role to play in addressing climate change and now the focus is on how we must work in partnership with multiple stakeholders – such as governments, regulators, local communities – to define the actions we need to take. We currently have several requests from asset owners to help finance our various green projects and our CFO is looking at these various financing options.”
• Krista Tukiainen, Head of Research at Climate Bonds Initiative, said: “The fixed income space already has relatively good definitions and governance mechanisms to ensure projects can be financed, but market and policy-based mechanisms can work better in tandem to deliver impact in emerging markets. My reflection on this COP is that the introduction of a global baseline taxonomy is perhaps the single most crucial element in enabling financial institutions to make a tangible impact in addressing climate change and other sustainability priorities sooner rather than later. Taxonomies can help identify eligible projects even at the smallest levels and, if we can harmonise taxonomies in a scattered marketplace, this will ensure capital flows where it needs to.”
• Francisco López, Chile’s Vice Minister of Energy: “Chile’s goal of achieving Carbon Neutrality by 2050 is a challenge, given the need to decouple our economic growth from energy consumption and reduce our dependence on imported fossil fuels. 77% of Chile’s Green House Gas emissions are linked to the energy sector. However, this is the same sector that will help us tackle climate change and bring both social and economic opportunities to the country. The energy sector is leading Chile’s decarbonization plan and commitment to reach carbon neutrality by 2050 through investing in renewable energy, developing a green hydrogen industry, withdrawing from coal-fired power plants by 2040, replacing fossil fuels with electricity in the transport sector and aiming to have 100% electric light and medium vehicle sales by 2035, amongst other things.”

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Joining on 6 January 2021, Mr. LaCoursiere will bring more than 20 years of investment research capability to the firm and drive the integration of ESG across its strategies.

With this newly-created role, Janus Henderson continues to invest in its ability to provide our clients with market-leading risk adjusted investment returns, this includes a focus on the ESG principles that the firm believes support long-term sustainable business practices.

Mr. LaCoursiere will be based in Janus Henderson’s London office and report to Enrique Chang, Global Chief Investment Officer. Mr. LaCoursiere joins from Aviva Investors, where he has held various roles since 2014; most recently Global Head of ESG Research.  Mr LaCoursiere has held senior portfolio manager, client portfolio manager, and senior fixed income strategist roles with Chicago Equity Partners, Barclays Global Investors, and Munder Capital Management.

Enrique Chang, Global Chief Investment Officer at Janus Henderson, said: “We believe there is a correlation between the evaluation of ESG factors and identifying companies that will grow and succeed in the future. With Paul’s hire, Janus Henderson is demonstrating how seriously we take ESG considerations. Paul augments our existing strong capabilities with his experience and leadership skills which will further embed ESG capabilities within our investment philosophies”.

Matt Gaden, Head of Australia, Janus Henderson Investors, said, “I believe the transition to a low-carbon economy is a trend that will continue. During COVID, we have been given an accidental glimpse into a low-carbon future. Cities have been quieter and with a marked reduction in air travel we have seen a significant drop in air pollution levels. In Australia, we are also witnessing more investors and those who advise them, demand investment portfolios that reflect their broader values.

“Janus Henderson has a 30-year history in sustainable investing and we are continually scanning the horizon to help protect our clients’ wealth from risk – whether that’s political, environmental, social or economic in nature, or even from risk on a governance front. Paul’s appointment is a valuable addition to our expanding ESG capability and our commitment to consideration of ESG across all asset classes and as a firm.” he concluded.

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