Deals and People May 24, 2010

Mercer Adds MD to Global Health Management Team

May 24, 2010 (PLANSPONSOR.com) - Robert Allen, MD, has joined Mercer’s Global Health Management team, part of Mercer’s global Health & Benefits business.
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Allen will work with multinational organizations to develop strategies for delivering health risk management, absence management, and behavioral health solutions at the global, regional, and local-country levels. He will be based in Los Angeles and Singapore.  

“In Asia, Mercer is focused on innovation and leading the market with health and wellness management solutions that improve the performance of benefits plans and employer competitiveness,” said Rosaline Chow Koo, Senior Partner and leader of Mercer’s Health & Benefits business in Asia Pacific, in a news release.” With Dr. Allen’s expertise, we will develop enhanced programs that directly impact health costs, productivity and employee engagement levels. These strategies and solutions include health risk management, vendor negotiations and the development of metrics around employee health.”  

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According to the news release, prior to joining Mercer, Allen was the regional medical director for Asia strategy with International SOS, based in Singapore. He developed sales and marketing strategies, and consulted with multinational organizations to develop health management programs for expatriate and local employees. He also has served as Medical Director with Great West HealthCare, Aetna, and Cigna in the U.S.   

Allen holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Biology and a Doctor of Medicine degree from Creighton University, where he also completed his residency in Internal Medicine. 

Products May 24, 2010

Invesco Launches Balanced-Risk Commodity Strategy

May 24, 2010 (PLANSPONSOR.com) - Invesco’s Global Asset Allocation team has now launched, and recently been awarded its first mandate in, its Balanced-Risk Commodity strategy.
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According to the announcement, the strategy is designed to provide investors with exposure to the commodity markets “while taking advantage of multiple return sources not captured in the common commodity indices”. Using a benchmark agnostic approach that Invesco says capitalizes on both structural and tactical sources of return, the strategy seeks to outperform the common commodity indices over time with improved volatility and drawdown characteristics. The strategy’s goal is to use proprietary risk management and re-balancing techniques to generate returns with a higher Sharpe Ratio over time than what is available from the common commodity indices, according to the firm.

“Commodities are unique in many ways when compared to more familiar asset classes like equities or fixed income,” said Scott Wolle, Chief Investment Officer of Invesco Global Asset Allocation.  “Investing in commodities provides investors with several return opportunities not present in other asset classes that can have a material impact on results. By taking a benchmark agnostic approach to the asset class, we are able to capture these return opportunities in a mandate that is very competitively priced and that has high transparency.”

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The Balanced-Risk Commodity strategy targets an excess return of 5% per annum vs. the Dow Jones – UBS Commodity Index over a 3 to 5 year investment horizon, according to the firm, which says that the Global Asset Allocation team has successfully applied the same principles since September 30, 2008 in the commodity portion of its risk-parity strategy, Premia Plus.

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