This article appears courtesy of Global Investor.
TEAM ASSET Management oversees the $55 billion General Electric Pension Trust defined benefit plan, as well as the company's $24 billion of insurance assets, and $15 billion of employee accounts. Not only is GEAM one of the few sponsors to oversee its own portfolio day to day, it also manages over $100 billion for clients outside the firm, including insurance companies and institutional and retail investors, making total assets $199 billion at year end 2006.
"In my first seven years, I worked in financial areas at GE International and GE Corporate," said Ron Pressman, CEO?of GEAM. "I then had my first 'real job' as Controller of Kidder Peabody (a GE subsidiary at the time) in 1987. For the last 15 years, I've been running businesses – industrial ones, like power generation systems in Europe and the US, and then returning to Financial Services, to lead real estate finance and investing for GE Capital, and then GE's reinsurance and insurance business from 2000 to 2006." He was tapped to head GEAM in mid-2006.
"We've been managing the assets of the General Electric Pension Trust for over 75 years, and over that time the team has consistently exceeded GE's expectations for performance," Pressman explains.