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The 2014 Pension 40: Amy Kessler

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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


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