Lombard Odier Investment Managers Appoints Théodore Economou to lead multi-asset business

The unit, which managed $5.2 billion at the end of December, also includes a fiduciary management division.

Mr Economou most recently served as CEO and Chief Investment Officer of the CERN Pension Fund, where over five years he initiated a risk-based approach that came to be known as the CERN Model. The multi-asset, factor-driven model aims to preserve capital while maximizing returns relative to risk.

Mr Economou will be based in Geneva and build on a similar approach that LOIM began applying to its own employee pension fund in 2009 and developed for institutional clients. The risk-based approach is designed to meet the needs of Sovereign Wealth Funds and pension funds. He will report to Jan Straatman, Chief Investment Officer of LOIM.

“Clients are looking for sophisticated and solid approaches to today’s volatile and low-yield environments,“ said Mr Straatman. “Théodore’s depth of experience running pension funds and his outstanding knowledge of their investment needs in building portfolios will be extremely valuable to our clients.”

In multi-asset investing, portfolios are built with a global mix of asset classes and styles, including investments in public and private markets. Factor-driven—also called smart beta-—portfolios allocate assets to investments with identifiable characteristics or “factors” that account for their performance.

Before joining CERN, Mr Economou was assistant treasurer of ITT Corporation in New York where he managed pension assets and liabilities worldwide as well as the firm’s capital markets activities. Prior to that, he was a consultant with Accenture’s Financial Services Group in Geneva and Zurich. He holds an M.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne and an MBA from Northwestern University’s J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management.

LOIM’s Geneva-headquartered business managed $54 billion on behalf of clients at the end of June 2014. LOIM’s managers seek to deliver performance by identifying sources of risk and return through absolute return, smart beta and high conviction strategies. LOIM offers a range of solutions including risk-based asset allocation, thematic equity investments, convertible bonds, absolute return as well as single-manager hedge funds.