•  
• Tweet
•  
•  
•        Print
•  
•        Email
•  
•         Track Keywords

Kate has over 30 years of industry experience and joins having spent ten years at S&P Capital IQ, most recently as Global Head of Fixed Income/Alternatives Fund Research. Prior to that she spent five years working for various funds of hedge funds and 15 years in fixed income sales and trading, in London and New York, for Deutsche Bank, Daiwa Securities, Scotia McLeod and Schroders. Kate has an MA in Mathematics from Oxford University.

Chris Redmond, global head of credit at Towers Watson, said: “We are delighted that Kate has joined us as she brings with her a wealth of asset management experience, especially in fixed income alternatives research. She joins a very active research stream which had its busiest year ever, in terms of selections and assets moved, in 2014.”

Credit selections by Towers Watson’s clients in 2014 totalled $34.8bn of which a majority were invested in global bond ($12bn) and US mandates ($7.3bn), however clients continue to embrace opportunities in alternative and illiquid credit, with $4.5bn deployed in less efficient segments of the market such as direct lending and structured credit opportunities. During the year $1.5bn was invested in smart beta in the bond area.

Chris Redmond said: “One of the areas where Kate will use her experience is to drive smart beta innovation among bond managers. While Towers Watson has made significant strides in this space, further development and innovation is required in order to keep pace with the transformational changes seen in equities and diversifying strategies. There are a number of obvious reasons for this, but investors in credit who want to capture beta efficiently and improve implementation of thematic and tactical views shouldn’t have to wait years to be able to do this; so we intend to keep driving change here.”

Towers Watson has one of the industry’s largest teams dedicated to manager research. The team of over 130 associates provides a range of fund analysis, manager research, selection and monitoring services globally for sovereign wealth funds, pension funds, insurance companies and private wealth managers.

(press release)
km