Watson Wyatt Worldwide, Inc. was a global
consultingManagement 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 PerrinTowers 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 WatsonTowers 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 benefitEmployee benefits and benefits in kind are various non-wage compensations provided to employees in addition to their normal wages or salaries...
programs; developing
attractionRecruitment 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
rewardRemuneration 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 strategiesIn 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
insuranceIn 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,
outsourcingOutsourcing 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
subsidiaryA 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 consultingHuman 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,
EuropeEurope 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
ArlingtonArlington 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...
,
VirginiaThe 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 IncTowers 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 WatsonTowers 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
actuarialAn 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
UKThe 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 programsNational 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.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 careHealth 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
compensationExecutive 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
CanadaCanada 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 AmericaLatin 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
allianceA 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
brandThe 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 offeringAn 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 ExchangeThe 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
NetherlandsThe 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
GermanGermany , 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
SwedenSweden , 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 offA 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 StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
and
CanadaCanada 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 bargainingCollective 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
lawsuitA 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 WorkersThe 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
MichiganMichigan 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.