Passings: Martin Jack, Former IBM Pension Chief, 58

(July 8, 2011) — Martin Jack, retired head of IBM’s Retirement Funds EMEA group in London, died of a heart attack on Wednesday, June 29, on an early morning run. His long successful career at IBM included an assignment at ROLM in California, prior to his introduction to retirement fund management helping migrate IBM Europe pension funds into global custody. His successes there led to his being named head of the Retirement Funds Europe/Middle East/Africa group in 1996, at a time when plans were being closed to new entrants, and environmental and regulatory changes were making pension management more challenging. In addition to navigating these areas successfully, he developed IBM’s global asset pooling structure, whereby IBM’s subsidiaries around the world were able to invest side-by-side in commingled structures. This drove improved investment quality and performance, risk management capabilities, ease of manager management, and cost/tax/oversight/custody efficiencies. The pioneering structures he implemented are among the largest and most successful corporate pooling efforts of their kind.  After retiring from IBM in 2007, Jack joined Northern Trust Global Advisors as Managing Director of their multi-manager business. Earlier this year he joined Inalytics to head a group to measure manager fiduciary capabilities.  He was a Chartered Accountant and a CAIA charterholder.

Martin was an outstanding executive, with the wisdom to anticipate challenges, the intelligence to design robust solutions, and the skill to implement them well, a combination rarely found in one person.  His work on the global pooling project was a great example of his ability to get great things done that others said couldn’t be done.  I will miss him terribly, and our thoughts and prayers go out to his wife Jackie, and his three children.