Mercer Investment Consulting and Russell/Mellon Announce Performance Evaluation Outsource Agreement

Business Wire, Feb 20, 2001

Business Editors

NEW YORK & TACOMA, Wash.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 20, 2001

Mercer's investment consulting clients will receive

state-of-the-art performance evaluation services through a

systems-leasing arrangement with Russell/Mellon Analytical Services

William M. Mercer Investment Consulting, Inc. and Russell/Mellon Analytical Services have agreed to enter into an outsourcing arrangement that will enable Mercer to improve the performance evaluation services provided to clients in the United States.

This upgrade in performance evaluation reporting and delivery capabilities will allow Mercer Investment Consulting to focus more fully on its core business of providing clients with interpretation of investment results and strategic investment advice.

"We are excited about being able to improve the services we provide to clients while making our internal processes more efficient," says Jim Hiner, who heads Mercer Investment Consulting's National Resource Group in Chicago. "We are even more pleased to accomplish this in concert with an organization of Russell/Mellon's caliber."

Mercer will have a secure-access link to Russell/Mellon's system for posting, both electronically and manually, data from clients' custodians to generate performance returns, characteristics, and attribution results and to generate quarterly performance evaluation reports. Via electronic access to Russell/Mellon's suite of analytical tools, Mercer will be able to perform research and analysis within and across its client base, including use of the Russell/Mellon Trust Universe to analyze clients' total plan and asset class performance results.

"We are very excited to join with Mercer in providing them and their clients with state-of-the-art performance and analytical tools," says Bill Pryor, CEO, Russell/Mellon Analytical Services. "This opportunity demonstrates Mercer's dedication to providing their clients industry leading performance analytics and reinforces Russell/Mellon's commitment to providing advanced services to the industry."

The first major benefit to clients will be the addition of the Mercer client base into the Russell/Mellon Trust Universes. By significantly increasing the number of participants, Russell/Mellon and Mercer are now in a position to provide the highest quality and one of the most comprehensive sets of total fund universe data available in the industry. All clients who subscribe to the Russell/Mellon Trust Universes will benefit from Mercer's contribution.

Conversion to the Russell/Mellon system will begin this month, and it is expected that all third-quarter reports will be processed through the new system beginning this fall.

William M. Mercer Investment Consulting, Inc. is a leading provider of investment consulting services, such as asset allocation, investment policy, and manager searches, to the fiduciaries of pension funds, foundations, endowments, and other institutional funds. The company is a subsidiary of William M. Mercer, Incorporated, one of the nation's leading human resource consulting organizations. Headquartered in New York and with offices in 40 US cities, William M. Mercer, Incorporated is the US operating company of William M. Mercer Companies LLC, a worldwide consulting organization with more than 13,000 employees serving clients in 132 cities in 37 countries and territories. All of the companies are part of Mercer Consulting Group, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Marsh & McLennan Companies, Inc., which lists its stock (ticker symbol: MMC) on the New York, Chicago, Pacific, and London stock exchanges.

Russell/Mellon Analytical Services, a joint venture company formed by Frank Russell Company and Mellon Financial Corporation, with $3 trillion in global assets is one of the world's largest providers of sophisticated investment analysis tools for global money managers and institutional investors. Providing performance measurement, universe comparisons, and risk analysis tools and services for investment strategies, Russell/Mellon products help to maximize investment returns, minimize risk, and streamline reporting in changing and complex global markets. Russell/Mellon Analytical Services operates from three principal offices in Boston, Pittsburgh, and Tacoma and through subsidiaries and affiliated companies worldwide.