Responsibility Office with two new hires 

Hermes Investment Management, the £33.6 billion manager, has today announced the expansion of its Responsibility Office, with the appointment of Ingrid Holmes and Kate Fowler.

  Led by Leon Kamhi, Head of Responsibility, the Responsibility Office coordinates, develops and supports the implementation of the firm’s responsible investment and stewardship policies.

Holmes has a strong track-record in initiating and delivering public policy change in the field of sustainable finance, and joins Hermes as Associate Director.  She is responsible for developing and overseeing the businesses policy and advocacy programme and will report into Leon Kamhi.

Holmes joins from E3G – Third Generation Environmentalism, where she was a Director, responsible for managing strategic institutional relationships with government, European and international Institutions, finance community, business, NGOs and think tanks.  While at E3G, she delivered a series of high impact public policy reforms including the UK’s Green Investment Bank; pro-climate reform of the European Investment Bank’s energy lending policy; accounting rule reform for energy performance contracting.  Prior to this, she was Head of Policy for the UK Business Council for Sustainable Energy, leading the company’s EU and UK climate change and energy policy and advocacy work.  Holmes has also held roles with the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology (POST), Defra, Nature and NCB. Ingrid has a BSc from the University of Edinburgh, and MSc Environmental Technology from Imperial College, University of London.

Fowler joins Hermes as an Analyst, responsible for supporting the development and articulation of Hermes’ internal policy, external advocacy positions and consultation response across diverse topics including but not limited to: investment industry, governance, climate change, employee issues and diversity.  Prior to her arrival, Fowler was a member of the Projects and Operations team at A Blueprint for Better Business, developing the charities’ stance on a range of ESG and business issues through in depth research, outlining the key issues and Blueprint’s stance on topics such as fair pay and the impact of AI.  Fowler has BA in Classics from Corpus Christi College, University of Cambridge and will report into Holmes.

Leon Kamhi, Head of Responsibility at Hermes Investment Management, comments: “At Hermes, our stewardship responsibilities are an integral element of our overall approach to responsible investment management and a crucial contributing factor to delivering strong risk-adjusted performance over the short, medium and long-term. The addition of Ingrid and Kate to our Responsibility Office reinforces our commitment to ensuring responsibility is embedded throughout our business.”