American Express Financial acquired quantitative analysis and...

American Express Financial acquired quantitative analysis and portfolio optimization firm Dynamic Ideas. Terms were not disclosed. Dynamic Ideas’ four employees, Gina Mourtzinou, Steve Kokkotos, George Vetoulis and Thurston Towle, became American Express employees. Dimitris Bertsimas, one of the firm’s co-founders, is a consultant to American Express and remains Boeing Professor of Operations Research at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.The team at Dynamic Ideas — which had licensed its software to money managers — will run the $600 million to $700 million U.S. equity portion of the $1.1 billion-plus AXP Managed Allocation Fund, said Paul Johnson, a spokesman.