GLOBAL - Michael Dempsey, current head of Mercer's Irish investment management team, has been promoted to head of the consultancy's EMEA business.

He succeeds Tom Murphy, who will move to Boston as regional head of investment management.

Dempsey, who in his time at Mercer spent eight years in investment consulting, said his new position came at a time when there was growing demand on trustees and sponsors to make more informed decisions, as investment arrangements became more complex.

"The reality is that the markets move very quickly, and we've seen that certainly over the past couple of weeks," he told IPE. "Some pension funds themselves realise they may cannot manage and govern all of their affairs themselves and that there is a need for greater support."

He added that this support could be offered to achieve a greater upside or minimise the downside risk facing schemes in the current climate.

Dempsey, who has previously overseen the launch of Mercer's dynamic de-risking solution, said the consultancy's approach was to work with a client and decide on the best approach for fiduciary management, but that, in the end, it came down to the amount of governance a scheme had in place.

He said it was therefore important for a scheme to decide how much power it wished to grant delegated managers as part of a fiduciary mandate, allowing them to pass over day-to-day operation or implementation functions and react quickly in markets.

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