Willis appoints co-CEO’s to lead WCMA capital markets & ILS unit

Willis Group, the global insurance and reinsurance intermediary, has appointed two co-CEO’s to lead the Willis Capital Markets & Advisory (WCMA) investment banking and insurance-linked securities (ILS) unit, to replace exiting CEO Tony Ursano.

Tony Ursano had led the reinsurance capital markets, M&A and insurance-linked securities (ILS) unit WCMA since 2009 at Willis, but Ursano resigned recently leaving a leadership role that needed to be filled.

Willis has quickly appointed Rafal Walkiewicz and Michael Guo as new co-CEO’s who will jointly lead the WCMA investment banking and reinsurance capital markets activities at the broker.

Walkiewicz joined WCMA as a managing director in 2014 after spending ten years with investment bank Goldman Sachs, where he served in the financial institutions group. Guo joined Willis in 2013 as WCMA’s head of Asia, having previously served as a Partner and Managing Director of Boston Consulting Group’s Financial Services Practice.

Dominic Casserley, Willis Group CEO, commented on the appointments; “Our commitment to WCMA is strong. It sits at the heart of many of the most exciting changes taking place in the re/insurance industry. Rafal, Michael and the whole WCMA leadership team will ensure that our analytical capabilities, strength in reinsurance and capital markets experience are deployed to achieve the very best outcomes for our clients.”

“WCMA is a business with real impetus and energy. I look to the WCMA leadership team to sustain the tremendous client impact achieved over the past several years. I also want to thank Tony for his leadership and hard work building WCMA over the past six years,” Casserley continued.

The WCMA team operates from offices in New York, London, Hong Kong and Sydney, Australia.