Watson Wyatt Worldwide
Encyclopedia
Watson Wyatt Worldwide, Inc. was a global consulting
firm, which merged in January 2010 with Towers Perrin
to form Towers Watson
. The firm's services included managing the cost and effectiveness of employee benefit
programs; developing attraction
, retention and reward
strategies; advising pension plan sponsors and other institutions on optimal investment strategies
; providing strategic and financial advice to insurance
and financial service companies; and delivering related technology, outsourcing
and data services. Its principal operating subsidiary
, Watson Wyatt & Company, is a human capital consulting
firm with operations in the Americas, Europe
and Asia Pacific. Its corporate offices are in Arlington
, Virginia
.
As of January 2009 Watson Wyatt Worldwide had 7,700 employees in 106 offices located in 32 countries around the world. On June 28, 2009 it was announced Towers Perrin Forster & Crosby Inc
and Watson Wyatt Worldwide agreed to merge into a new publicly-traded company called Towers Watson
; the merger was completed in January 2010.
firm in the world, formed in 1878. Watson Wyatt's first client is still a client 130 years later.
Reuben Watson formed the UK
actuarial firm R. Watson & Sons in 1878. By the 1910s, the firm was the lead advisor to the government on social insurance programs
. Over the years, the firm expanded throughout Europe, building on its long history of serving the UK’s largest companies.
In 1946, B. E. Wyatt and seven co-founders established The Wyatt Company as an actuarial consulting firm. Over the next several decades, the U.S.
-based firm branched out into other service lines, including health care
and compensation
consulting. In the 1980s, the firm broadened its global reach, establishing offices throughout Canada
, Europe, Latin America
, and Asia.
In 1995, the two firms formed a global alliance
under the brand
Watson Wyatt Worldwide. The U.S.-based arm of the alliance was renamed Watson Wyatt & Company and the UK firm was called Watson Wyatt LLP. In 2000, Watson Wyatt & Company completed a successful initial public offering
and began trading on the New York Stock Exchange
. In August 2005, the two firms formally merged and the new company was named Watson Wyatt Worldwide.
-based alliance partner, Watson Wyatt Brans & Co. in February. In July, Watson Wyatt bought a German
human resources consulting firm, Heissmann GmbH. It purchased Oakbridge Consulting Group in Sweden
in October.
Also during 2007, Watson Wyatt acquired talent management technology and consulting firm, WisdomNet. The acquisition of WisdomNet expanded Watson Wyatt's capability in the human capital space by adding a technology suite to its existing talent management consulting group.
Also during 2007, Watson Wyatt announced that it would spin off
its multiemployer retirement practices in the United States
and Canada
. (A multiemployer retirement plan is set up under the terms of collective bargaining
agreements involving more than one unrelated employer, generally in the same industry.) Watson Wyatt will not own any portion of the new companies — Horizon Actuarial Services in the U.S. and PBI Actuarial Consultants in Canada — but it will receive a portion of the new firms' revenue for the next five years.
by the pension fund trustees of the Iron Workers
, Local No. 25, of Michigan
. The lawsuit alleged that the pension plan was underfunded as a result of the company's actuarial work. Under the settlement, Watson Wyatt paid $110 million but did not admit any wrongdoing.
Management consulting
Management consulting indicates both the industry and practice of helping organizations improve their performance primarily through the analysis of existing organizational problems and development of plans for improvement....
firm, which merged in January 2010 with Towers Perrin
Towers Perrin
Towers Perrin was a professional services firm specialising in human resources and financial services consulting, which merged in January 2010 with Watson Wyatt to form Towers Watson...
to form Towers Watson
Towers Watson
Towers Watson is a global consulting firm. Its principal lines of business are risk management and human resource consulting. It also has strong actuarial, investment consulting, and reinsurance brokerage practices. The Towers Watson corporate offices are in New York, New York.Towers Watson was...
. The firm's services included managing the cost and effectiveness of employee benefit
Employee benefit
Employee benefits and benefits in kind are various non-wage compensations provided to employees in addition to their normal wages or salaries...
programs; developing attraction
Recruitment
Recruitment refers to the process of attracting, screening, and selecting qualified people for a job. For some components of the recruitment process, mid- and large-size organizations often retain professional recruiters or outsource some of the process to recruitment agencies.The recruitment...
, retention and reward
Remuneration
Remuneration is the total compensation that an employee receives in exchange for the service they perform for their employer. Typically, this consists of monetary rewards, also referred to as wage or salary...
strategies; advising pension plan sponsors and other institutions on optimal investment strategies
Investment strategy
In finance, an investment strategy is a set of rules, behaviors or procedures, designed to guide an investor's selection of an investment portfolio...
; providing strategic and financial advice to insurance
Insurance
In law and economics, insurance is a form of risk management primarily used to hedge against the risk of a contingent, uncertain loss. Insurance is defined as the equitable transfer of the risk of a loss, from one entity to another, in exchange for payment. An insurer is a company selling the...
and financial service companies; and delivering related technology, outsourcing
Outsourcing
Outsourcing is the process of contracting a business function to someone else.-Overview:The term outsourcing is used inconsistently but usually involves the contracting out of a business function - commonly one previously performed in-house - to an external provider...
and data services. Its principal operating subsidiary
Subsidiary
A subsidiary company, subsidiary, or daughter company is a company that is completely or partly owned and wholly controlled by another company that owns more than half of the subsidiary's stock. The subsidiary can be a company, corporation, or limited liability company. In some cases it is a...
, Watson Wyatt & Company, is a human capital consulting
Human resource consulting
Human resource consulting is an $18.4 billion industry that has emerged from management consulting, asclients' needs have become more complex and specialized, widening the gap between HR needs and work force capabilities, and thus accentuating the ability of HR management consulting firms to fill...
firm with operations in the Americas, Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
and Asia Pacific. Its corporate offices are in Arlington
Arlington County, Virginia
Arlington County is a county in the Commonwealth of Virginia. The land that became Arlington was originally donated by Virginia to the United States government to form part of the new federal capital district. On February 27, 1801, the United States Congress organized the area as a subdivision of...
, Virginia
Virginia
The Commonwealth of Virginia , is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" after the eight U.S. presidents born there...
.
As of January 2009 Watson Wyatt Worldwide had 7,700 employees in 106 offices located in 32 countries around the world. On June 28, 2009 it was announced Towers Perrin Forster & Crosby Inc
Towers Perrin
Towers Perrin was a professional services firm specialising in human resources and financial services consulting, which merged in January 2010 with Watson Wyatt to form Towers Watson...
and Watson Wyatt Worldwide agreed to merge into a new publicly-traded company called Towers Watson
Towers Watson
Towers Watson is a global consulting firm. Its principal lines of business are risk management and human resource consulting. It also has strong actuarial, investment consulting, and reinsurance brokerage practices. The Towers Watson corporate offices are in New York, New York.Towers Watson was...
; the merger was completed in January 2010.
History
Watson Wyatt Worldwide traces its roots back to the oldest actuarialActuary
An actuary is a business professional who deals with the financial impact of risk and uncertainty. Actuaries provide expert assessments of financial security systems, with a focus on their complexity, their mathematics, and their mechanisms ....
firm in the world, formed in 1878. Watson Wyatt's first client is still a client 130 years later.
Reuben Watson formed the UK
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
actuarial firm R. Watson & Sons in 1878. By the 1910s, the firm was the lead advisor to the government on social insurance programs
National Insurance
National Insurance in the United Kingdom was initially a contributory system of insurance against illness and unemployment, and later also provided retirement pensions and other benefits...
. Over the years, the firm expanded throughout Europe, building on its long history of serving the UK’s largest companies.
In 1946, B. E. Wyatt and seven co-founders established The Wyatt Company as an actuarial consulting firm. Over the next several decades, the U.S.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
-based firm branched out into other service lines, including health care
Health care
Health care is the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of disease, illness, injury, and other physical and mental impairments in humans. Health care is delivered by practitioners in medicine, chiropractic, dentistry, nursing, pharmacy, allied health, and other care providers...
and compensation
Executive compensation
Executive pay is financial compensation received by an officer of a firm, often as a mixture of salary, bonuses, shares of and/or call options on the company stock, etc. Over the past three decades, executive pay has risen dramatically beyond the rising levels of an average worker's wage...
consulting. In the 1980s, the firm broadened its global reach, establishing offices throughout Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
, Europe, Latin America
Latin America
Latin America is a region of the Americas where Romance languages – particularly Spanish and Portuguese, and variably French – are primarily spoken. Latin America has an area of approximately 21,069,500 km² , almost 3.9% of the Earth's surface or 14.1% of its land surface area...
, and Asia.
In 1995, the two firms formed a global alliance
Strategic alliance
A Strategic Alliance is a relationship between two or more parties to pursue a set of agreed upon goals or to meet a critical business need while remaining independent organizations...
under the brand
Brand
The American Marketing Association defines a brand as a "Name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller's good or service as distinct from those of other sellers."...
Watson Wyatt Worldwide. The U.S.-based arm of the alliance was renamed Watson Wyatt & Company and the UK firm was called Watson Wyatt LLP. In 2000, Watson Wyatt & Company completed a successful initial public offering
Initial public offering
An initial public offering or stock market launch, is the first sale of stock by a private company to the public. It can be used by either small or large companies to raise expansion capital and become publicly traded enterprises...
and began trading on the New York Stock Exchange
New York Stock Exchange
The New York Stock Exchange is a stock exchange located at 11 Wall Street in Lower Manhattan, New York City, USA. It is by far the world's largest stock exchange by market capitalization of its listed companies at 13.39 trillion as of Dec 2010...
. In August 2005, the two firms formally merged and the new company was named Watson Wyatt Worldwide.
2007 Acquisitions & spin-Off
During 2007, Watson Wyatt acquired three companies in Europe. It acquired its NetherlandsNetherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
-based alliance partner, Watson Wyatt Brans & Co. in February. In July, Watson Wyatt bought a German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
human resources consulting firm, Heissmann GmbH. It purchased Oakbridge Consulting Group in Sweden
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
in October.
Also during 2007, Watson Wyatt acquired talent management technology and consulting firm, WisdomNet. The acquisition of WisdomNet expanded Watson Wyatt's capability in the human capital space by adding a technology suite to its existing talent management consulting group.
Also during 2007, Watson Wyatt announced that it would spin off
Spin out
A spin-out, also known as a spin-off or a starburst, refers to a type of corporate action where a company "splits off" sections of itself as a separate business....
its multiemployer retirement practices in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
and Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
. (A multiemployer retirement plan is set up under the terms of collective bargaining
Collective bargaining
Collective bargaining is a process of negotiations between employers and the representatives of a unit of employees aimed at reaching agreements that regulate working conditions...
agreements involving more than one unrelated employer, generally in the same industry.) Watson Wyatt will not own any portion of the new companies — Horizon Actuarial Services in the U.S. and PBI Actuarial Consultants in Canada — but it will receive a portion of the new firms' revenue for the next five years.
2007 Iron Workers pension fund settlement
On 23 March 2007, Watson Wyatt settled a lawsuitLawsuit
A lawsuit or "suit in law" is a civil action brought in a court of law in which a plaintiff, a party who claims to have incurred loss as a result of a defendant's actions, demands a legal or equitable remedy. The defendant is required to respond to the plaintiff's complaint...
by the pension fund trustees of the Iron Workers
International Association of Bridge, Structural, Ornamental and Reinforcing Iron Workers
The International Association of Bridge, Structural, Ornamental and Reinforcing Iron Workers is a union in the United States and Canada, which represents primarily construction workers, as well as shipbuilding and metal fabrication employees.-Origins:...
, Local No. 25, of Michigan
Michigan
Michigan is a U.S. state located in the Great Lakes Region of the United States of America. The name Michigan is the French form of the Ojibwa word mishigamaa, meaning "large water" or "large lake"....
. The lawsuit alleged that the pension plan was underfunded as a result of the company's actuarial work. Under the settlement, Watson Wyatt paid $110 million but did not admit any wrongdoing.