Deutsche Bank has expanded its new Asia Pacific environmental, social and governence (ESG) team with the appointment of Kalpana Seethepalli.
Seethepalli joins as APAC director of ESG — a newly created role — from infrastructure investment firm Infra-Tech Capital, where she was managing director of sustainability and impact.
She will lead the APAC ESG team’s work on results frameworks, measurement, monitoring, and sustainable finance taxonomies.
Seethepalli joins the German multinational bank six months after the appointment of Kamran Khan as Deutsche’s first APAC head of ESG. Khan is Seethepalli’s former colleague at Infra-Tech Capita. They also both worked at World Bank, where Seethepalli was an economist over 17 years with the international finance group.
In her last position with World Bank, Seethepalli, who holds a doctorate in philosophy and management, focused on sustainable development and investment policy, blended finance, and public-private partnerships.
Khan said in a statement that the bank had seen rapid growth in interest in ESG investing over the last six months, and Seethepalli added “best-in-class” sustainability operational expertise to complement the bank’s coverage, structuring, and transaction services capabilities.
In new sustainability targets announced earlier this year, Deutsche committed to sustainable financing and investments that would exceed Euros 200 billion (US$236 billion) by 2025. Also this year, the bank pledged to end lending to coal mining by 2025.
