Federated Hermes has nabbed an emerging markets fund manager from Jupiter to replenish its impact investing team, which was raided by JO Hambro Capital Management in late 2019.
Amélie Thévenet (pictured) is one of two hires to the team with Federated Hermes stating she joins in September as a director and, pending internal approvals, will become a co-manager on the Impact Opportunities fund alongside Martin Todd.
Jordan Patel has also been hired as a senior analyst.
In December, Tim Crockford, who helped launch the Impact Opportunities fund in 2017, defected to JOHCM with three of his team members. Crockford is due to launch a multi-cap impact fund for JOHCM later this year.
Thévenet has been at Jupiter 13 years and will join her former colleague of nine years, Ingrid Kukuljan, when she joins the impact team. In 2018, she was appointed to manage the Jupiter Asian fund, taking over from Ben Surtees, who had suffered poor performance, and she has also run segregated global emerging market accounts. In the Jupiter emerging markets team, she has focused on healthcare and IT services across emerging markets and consumer discretionary in Asia.
Federated Hermes said both Thévenet and Kukuljan, who is head of impact investing, take a bottom-up, thematic approach to investing.
Patel joins this month from Titan Capital Management and will research companies and themes, including those related to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, which inform stock selection in the Federated Hermes Impact Opportunities fund.
He has experience covering responsible investment themes such as renewables, clean technology and water, as well as the global energy, shipping and industrial sectors. The Oxford and University College of London graduate started his career at Bernstein.
Federated Hermes head of investment Eoin Murray he was looking forward to extra firepower being added to the team. “Demand for sustainable investing has been on the rise and we have seen this accelerated further as the pandemic has put the need for sustainable solutions under the spotlight.
