MSCI Inc. (NYSE: MSCI), a leading provider of investment decision support tools worldwide, including indices, portfolio risk and performance analytics and corporate governance services, announced today that Brett Hammond has joined the firm as Head of Index Applied Research.
In this role, Mr Hammond has overall responsibility for defining and executing MSCI’s applied research agenda to support the MSCI index business, specifically by applying innovations in global indexing to institutional portfolios. He also directs research and thought leadership on the roles of active and passive investing.
Mr Hammond joins MSCI as a Managing Director, reporting to Remy Briand, Managing Director and
Global Head of Index and ESG Research, and is based in New York.
“Brett brings with him a wealth of experience and we are delighted that he has decided to join MSCI to head up our Index Applied Research team,” said Mr Briand. “In this role, we believe that Brett will have a unique opportunity to analyze the investment process globally through thought-provoking research, and to contribute to product innovation at MSCI.”
Prior to joining MSCI, Mr Hammond was Chief Investment Strategist for TIAA-CREF where he worked on the creation of target-date asset allocation products and inflation-linked bonds, individual financial advice models, an international nonprofit pension investment consortia and Social Security reform.
Mr Hammond also spent nearly ten years in Washington, D.C., principally at The National Academies (The National Research Council), where he was a member of the senior management team, with specific responsibility for behavioral and social sciences studies. He began his career teaching public policy at the University of California (UCLA and Berkeley).
Mr Hammond holds BA degrees in economics and political science from the University of California at Santa Cruz and a PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is also an Adjunct Professor at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, Program Chair and Executive Vice President of the Institute for Research in Quantitative Finance (Q Group) and a member of the advisory board of the Wharton School’s Pension Research Council.