Global professional services company Towers Watson has looked internally to find a replacement for Craig Baker following his recent appointment as global Chief Investment Officer.
The company announced it had promoted Luba Nikulina to global head of manager research, effective immediately.
Nikulina has worked for Towers Watson for nine years and held various manager research positions in the United Kingdom and the United States, most recently as global head of private markets research, based in London.
Commenting on his replacement in the manager research role, Baker said the company had been fortunate to have someone of Nikulina’s significant experience – gained both with Towers Watson and previously as a private equity investor – ready to take on this important global role.
“While this is excellent for continuity, it is also an opportunity to further evolve our research structure so that we continue to provide a sustainable competitive advantage for our clients,” he 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 public and private equity. It will also create better alignment between our research efforts and portfolio construction process,” Baker said.
Towers Watson has one of the industry’s largest teams dedicated to manager research and is made up of over 130 full-time and part-time associates who provide a range of fund analysis, manager research, selection and monitoring services globally for sovereign wealth funds, pension funds, insurance companies and private wealth managers.
