News from Allianz Partners, Amalgamated Life Insurance, American Family Life Insurance, American National Bank of Texas and more.(Photo: Shutterstock)

Quite a few new hires, promotions, partnerships, and anniversaries in the employee benefits and retirement industry. Take a look:

Akin Gump announced that Jon Chatalian has joined the firm as senior counsel in its labor and employment practice in Washington. He most recently served as Deputy Assistant General Counsel with the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC), responsible for overseeing, managing and coordinating the work of legal and actuarial teams for all multiemployer pension plan program litigation, compliance and regulatory matters. In addition to his multiemployer pension plan work, Mr. Chatalian represented the PBGC before U.S. bankruptcy and district courts in various ERISA cases.

Allianz Partners  announced that Jeff Wright joined the company as Chief Financial Officer and that Jim O'Connor has joined as Head of Operations.  Wright succeeds Diane Babson, who took an assignment with another Allianz Partners business unit, while O'Connor fills a new role helming the company's expanding Operations Division.   Prior to joining Allianz Partners, Jeff worked at Genworth Financial, where he was CFO of the US life insurance division.  Prior to joining Allianz Partners, Jim worked in the financial services industry, where he redesigned processes to improve customer experience and reduce complexity, cycle times and costs.