Towers Watson has named Luba Nikulina to global head of manager research, following Craig Baker’s recent appointment to the role of global chief investment officer.
In her new role, Nikulina with work closely with David Hoile, head of the asset research team, and Tim Hodgson, head of the company’s thinking ahead group, to ensure it has a consolidated approach to global research.
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Nikulina, who worked for Towers Watson for nine years, was most recently global head of private markets research in London. She also held several manager research roles in the UK and US.
Additionally, Towers Watson has restructured the manager research team under Nikulina’s leadership, which will have three global research streams.
As part of the restructuring, Jim McLachlan remains as head of the equity research team, while Chris Redmond continues to lead the credit research team and Damien Loveday, former head of the hedge fund stream, will take control of the newly created Diversifying Strategies stream.
The Diversifying Strategies team will include cover strategies such as macro hedged funds, reinsurance, systematic hedge fund strategies, multi-strategy, real estate, infrastructure, agriculture and timber, among others.
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By GlobalDataCraig Baker, global CIO at Towers Watson, said: "We have long been ‘asset class’ agnostic and operated in line with broadly defined investment return drivers when developing investment strategy and portfolio construction for our clients, so we are taking the opportunity to re-structure the manager research team under Luba’s leadership.
"The new structure will enhance our ability to compare mandates of a similar nature such as long only equity and long short equity, or indeed public and private equity. It will also create better alignment between our research efforts and portfolio construction process.
"We can offer clients a variety of differentiated solutions which span a variety of return drivers and the implementation spectrum from bulk beta through smart beta to alpha – whether in liquid or illiquid space," Baker added.
