SEARCHES & HIRINGS
City of Allentown (Pa.) Employees' Retirement System narrowed its search for a domestic intermediate-term fixed-income manager.
State Street Research, David Babson and Eagle Asset Management are finalists for the $25 million mandate.
The investment committee of the $80 million fund will conduct interviews April 23, and a selection will be made at the board's mid-May meeting, said Linda Bodnar, trustee. Legg Mason is assisting.
Alliant Techsystems, Hopkins, Minn., hired BNY Overlay Associates as currency overlay manager for its $950 million defined benefit trust fund, said Melanie Miller, manager of treasury operations and pension investments. BNY will provide currency hedging for the $200 million that is run by the fund's international equity managers.
Frank Russell assisted.
E.W. Scripps Co., Cincinnati, hired Denver Investment Advisors and Vanguard as equity managers for its $207 million defined benefit plan.
Denver will run a midcap U.S. equities mandate and Vanguard's allocation will go into the firm's Institutional Index Fund, said Tim King, spokesman for E.W. Scripps. Fund officials would not say how much each firm will run. Funding will come from existing managers, and no managers are being terminated. The hirings followed a restructuring of the pension fund. The searches were conducted in-house.
The American AAdvantage family of mutual funds chose Bankers Trust Co.'s Equity 500 Index Portfolio as the investment vehicle for its new S&P 500 index fund, Bankers Trust announced.
The American AAdvantage Funds is sponsored by AMR Investment Services, the money management arm of AMR Corp. The American AAdvantage S&P 500 Index Fund is the first index fund in the fund family.
Initially, the American AAdvantage S&P 500 Fund will be available to participants in the 401(k) plan of the SABRE Group, a travel and information company partly spun off from AMR Corp.
Sierra Pacific Power, Reno, Nev., hired Vanguard as trustee and record keeper of its 401(k) plan. Vanguard replaces Bank of New York, which was trustee for the past year, said Diane Bates, benefits strategist. Ms. Bates would not give the size of the plan, but according to Nelson's Directory of Plan Sponsors it has $20.2 million in assets.
Prior to Bank of New York, Vanguard was the bundled provider for the plan. The firm now will provide a ``quasi-bundled'' approach in providing record keeping and investment management along with outside fund managers to help the company save on fees. Sierra originally moved to Bank of New York in anticipation of a merger that never took place.
Citizens National Bank, Meridian, Miss., hired Fifth Third Bank as custodian for the bank's $150 million of trust assets. Fifth Third will provide safekeeping of trust assets, trade settlements, income collection and reporting It replaces First Chicago NBD, which is withdrawing from the custody business. The search was done in-house.
