Deals & People October 17, 2011

Prudential Retirement Reorganizes

Prudential Retirement has reorganized its business to integrate its product, service and operations teams into three business lines.
Reported by

The business lines are: Total Retirement Solutions, Institutional Investment Solutions, and Pension and Structured Solutions.

Total Retirement Solutions integrates the company’s full-service defined contribution, defined benefit, nonqualified business, and consulting services. George Castineiras will lead this group, and administration, recordkeeping, plan sponsor and participant services, operations, and marketfacing teams will become part of this group.

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The Institutional Investment Solutions group, led by Jamie Kalamarides, is responsible for manufacturing stable value, institutional income, institutional investment, and bank and brokerage products. These products will be sold through Total Retirement Solutions to third-party partners and to existing business relationships and others that will be identified going forward.

Pension & Structured Solutions, which will continue to report to Phil Waldeck, includes the business’s Pension Risk Transfer unit and Structured Settlements, with the operations functions required to support this business.

“Historically, we have been functionally organized,” said Christine Marcks, president of Prudential Retirement. “This organizational structure will give us an even better line of sight to our clients and greater ability to innovate for advisers, plan sponsors, and participants.”

Also under the new organizational structure, the Strategic Relationships unit, led by Harry Dalessio, who previously reported to Castineiras, will now report directly to Marcks. Strategic Relationships’ focus is expanding and strengthening Prudential Retirement’s relationships with intermediaries, and it will oversee the development of strategies for each of the key intermediary relationships for the three newly-defined business areas. The Strategic Relationships team will also implement the business’ national channel strategy and source new intermediary relationships for consultants, advisers, and third-party platforms.

Deals & People October 17, 2011

Former JPMorgan Trader Starts Fund

Former JPMorgan Chase trader Damien Bombell has started a hedge fund to invest in metals, grains, and energy, reports Business Week. 
Reported by

The Strand Global Macro Fund began investing this year with money provided by Bombell and his partners. According to the Business Week article, the fund plans to start trading with capital from external clients in January, and is seeking to have at least $200 million under management.

“The reason why people should invest in strategies like mine is that we are not in an investing environment anymore,” said Bombell.“For the next five to 10 years, we are likely to be in a very disjointed market place, where politicians lurch from one crisis to another. You need tactical traders and people who are mentally flexible.”

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Bombell left JPMorgan in November 2010 after the New York-based company told him and other members of the commodities proprietary trading desk it would shut down the unit to comply with U.S. rules that prevent banks from using their own money to wager on markets.

The Strand Fund will try to produce annual returns of 15 to 20%, said Bombell, who serves as Chief Investment Officer of the Zug, Switzerland-based Strand Asset Management AG.

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