Aviva creates a sustainable equities seat and hires Lilloy

Aviva Investors has carved out a new head-of-sustainable-equities position and hired Luciano Lilloy from Impax Asset Management to run it, ESG Today reported. Lilloy takes on the named portfolio manager role on the firm's existing Global Climate Equity Strategy, arriving from the transition-focused Impax, where he co-managed more than $10 billion in sustainable and thematic equities.

In his new role at Aviva, the global asset management business of Aviva plc, Lilloy will help further develop the firm's sustainable equities capabilities, the firm said. The appointment brings a parallel change on the research side: Duncan Bulgin has been named head of equity research as Max Burns retires this year, and Lilloy assumes Burns's portfolio management responsibilities for the Global Climate Equity Strategy.

The sustainable equities seat is newly created; the strategy Lilloy inherits is not. Aviva is handing an existing product to an external hire while the research leadership changes around him. Creating that stand-alone head role says sustainable equities are a product category with their own reporting line inside active equities, not a theme scattered across generalist sector funds.

Impax is a sustainable transition-focused investor, so the hire brings experience running substantial transition-oriented equity portfolios onto Aviva's platform, where the new seat puts him in charge of a named strategy. That fits the shift this publication has tracked: capital moving out of marketing labels and into dedicated teams with specific, accountable mandates.

Nicholette MacDonald-Brown, head of active equities at Aviva Investors, said the firm is 'thrilled' to welcome Lilloy and Bulgin and wants to 'further evolve our Equity offering.' Lilloy now owns a named climate strategy and holds a seat in the leadership of Aviva's active equity lineup, giving clients and consultants a clear target to watch when the strategy next reports flows and performance. Aviva has set itself up to treat sustainable equities as a core category within active equities. The market will test that setup in the numbers.