The bank has made high-level hires in Singapore, Zurich and London.

Credit Suisse has made three senior hires in Singapore, Zurich and London, adding to its team working in the field of impact investment and sustainable finance.

The hires complement Daniel Wild's appointment to the bank’s Impact Advisory and Finance Department as global head of Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) Strategy, as announced in April this year, the bank said yesterday.

Dr James Gifford has joined as head of impact advisory - a newly-created role. Gifford is responsible for advising Credit Suisse’s private wealth clients globally and for helping to drive the bank’s impact thought leadership and impact industry development initiatives. He joined from UBS where he was previously head of impact investing in its wealth management division. In 2004, he founded the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investing, a global initiative for sustainable investing, which was part of the United Nations Environment Program Finance Initiative.

Additionally, in 2014 Dr Gifford established and developed the joint family office impact investing programme at Harvard University and the University of Zurich. He has a PhD in economics, focused on the effectiveness of shareholder engagement in improving corporate sustainability performance.

Based in Singapore, Dr Gifford reports to Marisa Drew, CEO of the IAF Department, with a regional reporting line to Bernard Fung, of wealth planning services, Asia-Pacific.

Guillaume Bonnel - based in Zurich - has joined the bank as head of sustainable and impact products. Bonnel is responsible for managing the sustainable and impact product-offering suite and for driving associated product education and advisory services. He was previously at Lombard Odier where he had been head of impact investing since October 2016. He worked at Lombard Odier for six years. Prior to this, Bonnel was a sustainable and responsible investment advisor at a number of financial institutions, including BNP Paribas.

He has a dual reporting line to Marisa Drew in IAF and to Steven Bates, head of investment product management, within IS&P Product & Services.

In July, it was announced that Helen McDonald had joined Credit Suisse as UK head of foundations and impact advisory services, a newly-created role in which she looks after UK nonprofit institutions and advises UK clients in respect of their sustainable and impact investment ambitions. She joined from UBS where she was most recently head of charities, foundations and social investing. Previously she worked at Goldman Sachs, SG Warburg Securities and Kleinwort Benson Investment Management. She also spent four years as a member of the Investment Committee at Trinity College, Oxford.

Helen is based in London and has a dual reporting line to the UK private banking team, led by Christian Berchem, CEO of Credit Suisse UK, part of International Wealth Management, and to the IAF Department, led by Marisa Drew.