Allstate Hires Former Soros Risk Manager

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MarketWatch

February 18, 2010 Thursday 2:36 PM EST

SECTION: NEWS & COMMENTARY

LENGTH: 315 words

HEADLINE: Allstate hires former Soros risk manager

BYLINE: Alistair Barr, MarketWatch mailto:[email protected].

Alistair Barr is a reporter for MarketWatch in San Francisco.

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Allstate Corp. said Thursday that it hired former Soros Fund Management LLC risk manager Peruvemba Satish to oversee risks in the auto insurer's $100 billion investment portfolio that suffered big losses during the financial crisis.

Satish, 45, will be managing director and chief risk officer, investments at Allstate (ALL) . He will report to Judy Greffin, senior vice president and chief investment officer, who oversees the company's $99.8 billion portfolio.

Satish has roughly a decade of risk-management experience in the hedge fund industry. He was most recently chief risk officer at Jamison Capital Partners LP, a New York-based hedge fund firm run by Stephen Jamison.

From 2004 to 2009, Satish was chief risk officer and a member of the investment committee at DKR Capital Partners LP, another hedge fund firm. Before that, he was director of risk management at Soros Fund Management from 2001 to 2004.

Allstate suffered billions of dollars in investment losses during the recent financial crisis, partly from large holdings of mortgage-backed securities and complex vehicles known as collateralized debt obligations, or CDOs.

The insurer realized $1.9 billion of investment losses during the fourth quarter of 2008 alone. By the end of that year, Allstate had $8.8 billion of unrealized investment losses and more than $14 billion of exposure to mortgage-backed securities and CDOs.

A rebound in equity and some fixed-income markets helped Allstate's investments rebound. The insurer has also been trying to cut risks in its portfolio while putting money back to work into higher-yielding securities. By the fourth quarter of 2009, the insurer's unrealized losses were down to $2.3 billion and investment income was $1.1 billion.

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