Alison Deans is a senior executive in the financial services industry and a market commentator on television. Her accomplishments in asset management, brokerage, and banking encompass a breadth of experience from restructuring to providing investment advice.
Deans worked at Lehman Brothers/Neuberger Berman from 2004 to July 2009. Most recently Deans was Head of Equities and Private Asset Management, an $800-million-revenue business with 400 people reporting to her. She also served as chief investment officer overseeing the policy, risk and performance measurement groups for both fixed income and equities.
Under her leadership, Neuberger Berman’s high net-worth business progressively grew through organic initiatives, lift-outs and acquisitions, and asset inflows via Neuberger Berman Wealth Management and other channels. During her time at Neuberger assets under management increased 4 percent more than the market on an annual basis and accounts remained flat despite all the turmoil surrounding Lehman. In her role as CIO, she restructured the Risk and Performance Analytics functions improving the quality and timeliness of data needed to drive investment and risk management decisions.
Previously, Deans was brought in to Lehman Brothers as CIO of Private Investment Management to build a comprehensive advice and product platform of asset allocation, portfolio strategy and manager selection advice. While in this role the business moved from being highly transactional with over 90 percent of revenues from commissions to around 40 percent from fees while total revenues increased by over 20 percent. Assets under management on the WRAP platform she restructured increased from around $1 billion to close to $5 billion, while assets in Neuberger funds, which had been acquired during this period reached close to $6 billion.
Prior to Lehman Brothers, Deans was chief financial officer of Commercial Banking for BankOne from 2000 to 2003. The Commercial Bank was a multi-product, multi-channel global business with $3 billion in revenues, $150 billion in assets and over 18,000 employees. As part of the team brought in by CEO Jamie Dimon, Deans was an instrumental team member in the company’s successful restructuring.
Deans spent nine years at Travelers/Citigroup. From 1999 to 2000 she was director of development at Citigroup. In that role she led strategic projects for the Office of the Chairman. Previously, Deans was a securities analyst covering the financial services industry. As an analyst, she was consistently top-ranked in both the Institutional Investor and Wall Street Journal polls.
Deans is a regular commentator on CNBC, speaking on the markets and the economy. Previously she was a regular commentator on Louis Rukeyeser’s Wall Street for ten years.
Deans holds a BSE in economics from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. She is a board member, treasurer, and finance committee chair for Dance Theater Workshop and on the board and finance committee of the After School Corporation.
