, general manager of Luxflag, died on 15 July. He had been ill with covid-19 for several weeks. Vankalas had recently turned 38.

Vankalas headed up the fund labelling agency--which checks the ethical and responsible investment claims made by asset managers--for the past two years and had worked there for a decade.

“Ken Hay, Luxflag’s first chairman, hired him as an analyst” in 2011, according to Tom Seale, who was Luxflag’s chairman from 2012 to 2019. “He diligently worked himself up from there. I named him director general of Luxflag in 2019.”

“He had a stellar career at Luxflag, helping grow the agency into a EU force in labelling. His loss is that of his family, friends, colleagues and of the Luxembourg financial centre,” Seale told Delano.

Prior to Luxflag, Vankalas was an investment officer with ResponsAbility Social Investments in Zurich and a ratings analyst with M-Cril, a microfinance research and advisory firm. He earned a master’s degree in banking and finance from the Luxembourg School of Finance and completed two executive training programmes at Harvard University.

“Sachin’s passion for promoting the development of sustainable finance always shone through and had an impact on all of us,” Denise Voss, Luxflag’s current board chair, said in a Linkedin post. “As a manager he led by example and his dedication, persistence and energy were a source of motivation and inspiration for his team and colleagues.”

Voss’s post continued: “The Luxflag team and board all grieve the passing of a tremendous human being and our hearts go out to his family for the loss they suffer. He will be greatly missed.”