Investment - Articles - Mercer appoints Head of Asset Allocation for EMEA

 Mercer has appointed Paul O’Connor as Head of Asset Allocation for Mercer’s Investment Management business in Europe, Middle East and Africa. As part of his remit, Mr O’Connor is responsible for the overall asset allocation strategy of Mercer’s clients' portfolios, with a specific emphasis on adding value through the use of Mercer's Dynamic Asset Allocation service (DAA).

  

 Mr O’Connor has over 16 years of experience as a market strategist and investor and was for the last 10 years a proprietary trader and strategist for Credit Suisse in London. Before that, Mr O’Connor was an equity strategist at BZW/Credit Suisse and was voted the top UK Equity Strategist by institutional investors in the Extel, Reuters and Institutional Investor surveys. He has a first class degree in Economics and an MSc in the same topic from the London School of Economics.

  

 Hooman Kaveh, European Chief Investment Officer for Mercer's Investment Management business, said: “Paul’s extensive market knowledge and short-term trading focus will provide added value to fiduciary management mandates through dynamically capturing investment opportunities and taking evasive action when markets are vulnerable to set-backs. This will supplement Mercer’s dynamic asset allocation process which provides added value through a medium term asset allocation process, and Paul will contribute to this process.”
 
 Mercer is now providing implemented investment solutions to 147 clients across EMEA. As at end of June 2011 this added up to $12.5billion in assets under management.