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Corporate Moves

Pension Protection Fund Founder to Become Clara’s First Chair

Lawrence Churchill will act in a ‘non-executive capacity’ for the start-up DB consolidator.

By Chris Butera

Lawrence Churchill



Lawrence Churchill, the founding chairman of the Pension Protection Fund, will once again become the inaugural chairman of Clara, another UK pension lifeboat.

Churchill, who also chairs the Pensions Policy Institute and Prudential’s independent governance committee, will act in a “non-executive capacity,” according to Clara. He will join Alan Pickering, who was recently named chairman of its trustee board, Michael Chatterton, and Frank Oldham.

Clara is a defined benefit consolidation vehicle, which takes floundering pensions and pools their assets together to create a larger fund in hopes of shoring up all of them. This helps reduce costs and improves governance. It also can provide more investment options since the consolidated plan now has more capital.

Clara is looking to launch in the coming months, where it will announce its first deal.

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Churchill said the new move was a “significant opportunity” for him, and that he was “looking forward to helping pioneer” the pension consolidation movement. While pension consolidations are still in their early days, Churchill hopes they will become the “route of choice” for companies looking to provide more security for the retirements of their beneficiaries.

Churchill also previously chaired NEST from 2010 to 2015 and the Financial Services Compensation Scheme from 2012 to this year. In his 40-plus years of financial service experience, 30 of them have been on boards.

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Home > News > Corporate Moves > Cambridge University CIO, Senior Staff Resign
Corporate Moves

Cambridge University CIO, Senior Staff Resign

Departure reportedly linked to criticism over endowment’s fossil fuel investments.

By Michael Katz

Nick Cavalla, CIO of Cambridge University’s £3.3 billion ($4.31 billion) endowment fund, and three senior members of his staff of nine are leaving the university to join Talisman Global Asset Management, the investment arm of the privately held William Pears Group.

During Cavalla’s tenure as head of Cambridge’s investment team, he helped increase the size of the university’s endowment to £3.3 billion from less than £1 billion, and delivered a 10% return on an annualized basis for more than 10 years, according to the university.

 Cavalla will become CEO of Talisman, which was established in 1994 to be the asset management arm of the Pears family. After starting with investment capital of £50 million, the firm now has total assets under management of £3.6 billion. Joining Cavalla at Talisman are investment director Bruce Lockwood, and associate investment directors Conor Cassidy and Vincent Fruchard, according to the Financial Times.

“After 10 years at the University of Cambridge, it felt like the right time to take on a new challenge, with the endowment in great shape for the future,” Cavalla said in release. “I am very excited to be joining Talisman Global Asset Management, a high-quality investment platform, and look forward to launching a new business for them.”

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 However, Cavalla’s decision to leave was related to ongoing criticism of the endowment and its investment team over its fossil fuel investments, according to two unnamed sources cited by the FT.  Cambridge Zero Carbon Society, a divestment campaign group, has been calling for Cavalla to resign for more than a year.

In June, the University’s council, which is the executive and policy-making body of Cambridge, rejected proposals from students and faculty to divest fossil fuel assets from the endowment’s portfolio.

“Pursuing a strategy that would insist on disengagement from any funds that have even small fossil fuel components, or that would require CUEF to step back from investments in alternative energy initiatives by global companies currently regarded as fossil fuel companies, would result in significant limitations on the CUEF’s ability to invest as successfully as in the past,” said the council in June in response to a report calling for fossil fuel divestment.

“Nick has done an incredible job in his time with Cambridge University,” Vice Chancellor Stephen Toope said in a release. “He has transformed the performance of our investment fund, enabling us to diversify our income in a way that has allowed the University to undertake developments which have greatly benefited our academic mission and our students.”

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