Global investment bank Jefferies has announced a major expansion of its clean-tech investment team, with the poaching of leading analyst JESSE PICHEL and his team from Piper Jaffray, and the recruitment of AMY CORINNE SMITH as managing director and co-head of global clean-tech investment banking.

Jefferies expands with Amy Smith hire

Pichel – Piper Jaffray’s managing director for clean technology equity research – brings with him senior vice president ELAINE KWEI and equity research associates MIN XU and CONSTANCE WANG. The team will be based in New York, joining Jefferies’s 11-strong global clean-tech research team. Meanwhile, Smith will be based in Jefferies’ San Francisco office, and will work in partnership with the UK-based head of European clean-tech investment banking BRUCE HUBER and US head JEFF LIPTON in New York.

She joins Jefferies from Barclays Capital and prior to that spent more than a decade at Lehman Brothers, where she rose to managing director and global co-head of alternative energy investment banking.

Meanwhile, Piper Jaffray has named AHMAR ZAMAN as a New York-based senior research analyst covering solar and clean technlogies. He joins from UBS Securities and will be taking up some of the slack created by the departure of Pichel’s team.

Rory Sullivan: Osmosis in action

RORY SULLIVAN, the former head of responsible investment at Insight Investment, has joined London-based asset management boutique Osmosis Investment Management. As head of responsible investment at Osmosis, a specialist asset manager focused on low-carbon investment, he will focus on integrating environmental, social and governance factors into the group’s investment strategy.

Sullivan left Insight in December, after parent company Lloyds Banking Group sold the group to the Bank of New York Mellon. Since then he has been consulting and has writ t en a book on corporate responsibility which is expected to be published next year.

UK-based carbon-focused insurance group Parhelion Underwriting has hired STUART BURCHELL as renewable energy underwriter. Burchell comes to Parhelion after seven years with Lloyd’s broker Windsor Partners, where he established and led its renewable energy insurance facility. He will report to JULIAN RICHARDSON, chief executive.

Environmental products brokerage Evolution Markets has bolstered its biofuels capability with two new recruits, JONATHAN AUERBACH and TOM SOLON. The former comes from Blue Ocean, another brokerage, where he developed its biodiesel brokerage business, while Solon is a former director of ConAgra Trade Group. Evolution Markets has also named existing partner JOHN DALL as the new head of the group’s biofuels desk.

COLIN PURDIE, formerly credit investment manager at Aegon Asset Management, has taken up the reins as socially responsible investment (SRI) credit fund manager at Aviva Investors in London. The new role will see Purdie oversee Aviva’s Sustainable Future Corporate Bond Fund and other SRI credit portfolios. He reports to PETER MICHAELIS, head of SRI at Aviva Investors, the asset management arm of Aviva Group, the world’s fifth largest insurance group. Aviva Investors manages £3.6 billion ($5.5 billion) of SRI assets.

Zoe Knight: climate strategising at HSBC

ZOE KNIGHT, a former senior director of SRI research at Merrill Lynch, has joined HSBC in London in a newly created role as director of climate change strategy. Knight, who was made redundant from Merrill Lynch last year in the wake of the bank’s merger with Bank of America, moves to HSBC from UK financial consultancy, Absolute Strategy Research. She reports to NICK ROBINS, head of the bank’s climate change centre of excellence.

The London-based sustainable investment and finance association, UKSIF, has named MARTIN CLARKE to the role of chairman. Clarke, who is an executive director of financial risk at the Pension Protection Fund and a non-executive director at Congregational & General Insurance, replaces outgoing chair and Aviva Investors head of sustainability research and engagement STEVE WAYGOOD.

NICK MOLHO, a London-based solicitor in the energy law team at CMS Cameron McKenna, has joined WWF-UK as head of energy policy. Molho will lead the NGO’s work on energy policy, working with both the public and private sectors to promote decarbonisation of the energy sector.

MARK DEANGELIS, a former managing director at environmentally-orientated investment manager RNK, has been appointed the 2010 professional-in-residence at the Cornell Institute for Public Affairs. DeAngelis – who has regularly lectured on environmental financial markets and climate change – will focus on advancing the Ithaca, New York-based institute’s environmental finance offering.