Commodity debate: Participants

Robert Brown (RB) is a senior investment consultant at Watson Wyatt and is chairman of its global investment committee, the group responsible for all of Watson Wyatt’s capital market assumptions and views. He provides advice on investment strategy, manager structure and manager selection for some of Watson Wyatt’s largest clients.

Frans de Wit (FdW) is senior investment manager of beta portfolios at PGGM, where he is responsible for the 5% strategic commodities allocation that has been in place since 2000. Before this he was responsible for back-office derivatives at PGGM.

Peter Dixon (PD) is a strategist at Commerzbank Corporates and Markets responsible for analysing economic and market trends. He was instrumental in setting up Commerzbank’s commodity research group, where his main focus is relating macro trends to the market picture, with a particular interest in the oil sector.

Bob Greer (BG) is an executive vice-president and manager of real-return products at Pimco. He was the first person to define an investable commodity index or to advocate it as a separate asset class. He recently authored The Handbook of Inflation Hedging Investments.

Pierre Guillemin (PG) is a managing director at SwissLife Asset Management, responsible for quantitative asset management and alternative investments. Previously, he was head of asset management at SwissLife Asset Management (France) where he developed quantitative techniques for asset allocation, credit management and directional trading.

Benno Meier (BM) works in Morgan Stanley’s commodities group, where he is in the investor marketing team in London. He focuses on the investor business in Europe, and constructs solutions for institutional investors wanting exposure to commodities.

Paul Touradji (PT) is the founder of Touradji Capital Management, a $2 billion New York and Houston based hedge fund specializing in fundamental research and active investment in commodities and commodity-related public and private equities. Paul began his commodities career over a decade ago at Tiger Management.

Stephan Wrobel (SW) is a founding partner and CEO at Diapason Commodities Management, a $6 billion Lausanne and London based asset management firm dedicated to commodity investments. The company has developed a range of investment solutions to give its clients exposure to the commodities market.