< The 2014 Pension 40: The Battle Is On
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Amy Kessler
Head of Longevity Risk TransferPension & Structured Solutions
Prudential Financial
PNR
It can be fairly said that no one in the U.S. today is more responsible for pension risk transfer transactions than Prudential Financial’s Amy Kessler, 47. Straight off her run as global head of Pension ALM, or asset-liability management, at Swiss Re in London, where she developed the first longevity insurance product for U.K. pensions, Kessler arrived at Pru in 2009 to bring the lessons she learned while operating in the capital of pension de-risking. She offers a range of risk-mitigating strategies to plan sponsors, from longevity-driven investing to pension buy-ins and buyouts, in which the sponsor off-loads all or part of its pension liabilities to the insurer. In July 2014 she led Prudential’s reinsurance team in the largest-ever longevity-risk transfer transaction, for the BT Pension Scheme, which established its own captive insurer. After earning a BA in economics and a master’s in international economics from Brandeis University, Kessler spent the 17 years through 2007 in debt capital markets at Lazard and Bear Stearns Cos., where she completed more than $40 billion in transactions, including helping sell New York City Recovery Notes issued in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The 2006 passage of the Pension Protection Act inspired Kessler to change sides. “Having solved many fixed-income problems, I wanted to solve pension fund problems,” she says, referring to the pension asset-liability puzzle. “That’s a ton of risk.”
The 2014 Pension 40
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| Bruce Rauner Illinois | John and Laura Arnold Laura and John Arnold Foundation | Randi Weingarten American Federation of Teachers | Rahm Emanuel Chicago | David Boies Boies, Schiller & Flexner |
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| Randy DeFrehn National Coordinating Committee for Multiemployer Plans | Damon Silvers AFL-CIO | Laurence Fink BlackRock | Chris Christie New Jersey | Robin Diamonte United Technologies Corp. |
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| Ted Eliopoulos California Public Employees’ Retirement System | John Kline Minnesota | J. Mark Iwry U.S. Treasury Department | Gina Raimondo Rhode Island | Phyllis Borzi U.S. Labor Department |
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| Orrin Hatch Utah | Abigail Johnson Fidelity Investments | Ted Wheeler Oregon | Caitlin Long Morgan Stanley | James Hoffa International Brotherhood of Teamsters |
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| Amy Kessler Prudential Financial | Alejandro García Padilla Puerto Rico | Christopher Klein U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Caifornia | Steven Rhodes Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Michigan | Kevin de León California |
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| David Draine Pew Charitable Trusts | Jordan Marks National Public Pension Coalition | Sam Liccardo California | Joshua Rauh Stanford Graduate School of Business | Karen Ferguson and Karen Friedman Pension Rights Center |
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| Timothy Blake Moody’s Investors Service | Kathleen Kennedy Townsend Center for Retirement Initiatives, Georgetown University | Edward (Ted) Siedle Benchmark Financial Services | Daniel Loeb Third Point | Judy Mares Employee Benefits Security Administration, U.S. Labor Department |
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| Andrew Biggs American Enterprise Institute | Andy Stern Columbia University | Kenneth Mehlman KKR & Co. | Teresa Ghilarducci New School for Social Research | A. Melissa Moye U.S. Treasury Department |
