Frank P.L. Minard, president of Mitchell Hutchins Asset Management, has agreed to become head of Bankers Trust's global investment management group late this year or early in 1996, sources say.
He would replace Ivan Wheen, who plans to leave the position at year end to assume another job with BT in Singapore.
Mr. Minard declined to comment; a Bankers Trust spokesman also declined comment.
Staff of the $88 billion California Public Employees' Retirement System is recommending the board approve an RFP for currency overlay management services, both active and passive.
The contracts for the fund's two currency overlay managers - Pareto Partners and BEA Associates - expire June 30.
The contracts could be extended, but the staff is asking for the RFP instead. Pareto has declined to accept additional assets under management at the current fee.
The RFP request is expected to be approved next week by the fund's board.
Nancy Kassebaum, R-Kansas, chairwoman of the Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee, introduced a bill requiring the Labor Department to clarify that pension fund assets held in insurance companies' general accounts are exempt from federal pension law.
Ms. Kassebaum's bill would require the Labor Department to issue that guidance retroactively to Jan. 1, 1975. The bill would not, however, affect any pending litigation.
The bill is intended to reverse a 1993 Supreme Court decision in John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance vs. Harris Trust and Savings Bank, which resulted in insurance companies becoming fiduciaries for certain portions of pension plan group annuity contracts they hold in their central investment pools.
The bill, introduced at the request of the life insurance industry, aims to prevent copycat lawsuits.
A provision dropped from the Senate tax bill that would let companies withdraw surplus assets from their pension funds might be resurrected when lawmakers from the House and Senate negotiate to produce a single tax bill, predicts Ann Combs, principal in the Washington office of William M. Mercer, and a former deputy assistant secretary in the Labor Department's pension office.
House Ways and Means Chairman Bill Archer, R-Texas, a key backer of the provision, "is seeking a way to forge a compromise that would be acceptable to Senate Republicans," Ms. Combs wrote in a memo to clients last week.
Moreover, some Republican Senators who voted to strip the provision from the Senate tax bill now are reconsidering their position, after seeing opponents crow over the 94-5 vote that removed the provision.
The $50 billion California State Teachers' Retirement System approved an RFP for a maximum of two passive equity money managers for emerging market investments.
The amount of money at stake wasn't available.
The $70 billion New York State and Local Retirement Systems and Union Labor Life will fund a $300 million commercial mortgage co-investment program that will finance real estate development using union labor in New York state, according to State Comptroller H. Carl McCall, sole trustee of the pension fund.
New York State and Local will invest $200 million and Union Labor Life will invest $100 million, according to a statement issued by Mr. McCall.
The $300 million will be invested through Union Labor's J FOR JOBS mortgage separate account.
The $25 million 401(k) plan of AMCOL International Corp. hired Northern Trust to provide bundled services that include the use of five money managers, said Amiel Naiman, benefits accounting manager.
The new bundled services, offered jointly by Northern Trust and its Hazlehurst & Associates unit, will take effect Jan. 1, providing record keeping and education services and increasing the plan's investment choices to eight from five.
The firms selected, and the funds they will manage, were: Templeton Worldwide, its Foreign Fund international equity portfolio; Dodge & Cox, a balanced fund; Neuberger & Berman, its Guardian growth equity fund; and Strong Capital, its Opportunity equity value fund.
Northern Trust will manage three other portfolios: an S&P 500 index fund, a stable-value fund, and a bond fund.
The plan will continue to offer an existing company stock fund.
The managers will replace Fidelity Institutional Retirement Services, which has been the plan's sole investment manager offering four choices.
Mr. Naiman declined to name the plan's current record keeper, but noted it is not Fidelity.
AMCOL selected Northern Trust in part because it will allow the plan to move to daily valuation from monthly valuation and also will have available a telephone service representative, rather than only an automated response system, Mr. Naiman said.
No consultant was used, he said.
General Motors Investment Management Corp. has named Paul Rudinoff director of risk management, a new position.
Mr. Rudinoff, previously in charge of more than $5 billion in GM's pension fund assets for employees in 12 foreign countries, now will be responsible for "analyzing, measuring and monitoring all the risk that the pension fund can and is likely to be susceptible to," he said.
Meanwhile, Walter Deck, a 31-year veteran of GM's pension fund who last worked in the domestic equity area at GMIMC, has retired.
Messrs. Rudinoff and Deck have not yet been replaced.
