Grant Thornton has announced the appointment of Neil Knights as a pensions audit director. Knights joins from the pensions team at Baker Tilly and will be responsible for the delivery of audit services to pension trustees. He also specialises in advising trustees on risk management and improving scheme governance. With over 20 years of experience, he has worked on a wide variety of schemes including defined benefit, defined contribution and hybrid.

Russell Investments has appointed Crispin Lace as a director of the consulting and advisory services team to support the growth and demand from existing and new clients for the company’s investment advisory services. Lace will focus on UK institutional investors and joins from Mercer where he worked with a number of large funds, designing and implementing asset allocation solutions for this segment. Prior to that, he worked for Watson Wyatt as head of its DC investment consulting team.

Jason Wright has joined Just Retirement as programme director to help with the company’s strategic growth plans. He will work with the executive team and oversee the delivery of the business investment programme portfolio. This includes new product development, distribution projects, existing product initiatives as well as regulatory and actuarial programmes such as Solvency II. Wright joins from Rothesay Life where he was chief operating officer for the Goldman Sachs insurance subsidiary.

Barings has appointed John Burns as chief operating officer taking over from John Misselbrook. Burns will be responsible for information technology, operations, human resources, organisational risk, business services and change management. He joins Barings from Visor Capital in Kazakhstan and will be based in London.

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