Manish Singhai
Former CIO

Manish Singhai is a seasoned investor, having joined the industry in 1993. Since 2003, he has held Asian CIO and CEO roles at global asset managers AllianceBernstein, Aviva Investors, Lazard AM, and Tokio Marine AM.

Manish is an early thought leader in the ESG space, and an active proponent of DEI. At AllianceBernstein as early as in 2000, he pioneered an inhouse Corporate Governance (CG) assessment framework, much before CG and SRI eventually morphed into ESG. In all investment processes he has since designed and led, he has ensured that ESG considerations are central but, in a pragmatic, and not pedantic manner.

Manish has also engaged continuously with corporate managements on ESG issues over more than two decades. In the early 2000s, he worked closely with a Korea University think-tank and other institutional investors to get truly independent directors elected to the boards of leading Korean corporates.

Manish was a member of the Equity Advisory Group, International Institute of Finance, Inc., and a leader/member of their Corporate Governance Task Forces on Indonesia, Malaysia, China and India. He has presented white-papers on ESG-related topics at prestigious forums such as the Fourth OECD roundtable in Asia and the Council of Institutional Investors (cii.org) plenary session in Washington DC. Very recently, Manish has created https://esg-matters.today to post periodic thought pieces on the E, S and G challenges encountered as an investor, and as a repository of ESG resources

Manish holds a B Tech from Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, an MBA Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Calcutta, and is a CFA charterholder.