CHICAGO -- Voyageur Asset Management, Minneapolis, has lifted out a team of four growth equity managers from Alleghany Asset Management and opened a Chicago office to house them.
Charles F. Henderson is executive vice president and chief investment officer of the new Chicago office. He was executive vice president and CIO at Chicago Trust, a subsidiary of Alleghany Asset.
Jerold L. Stodden, Nancy M. Scinto and David J. Cox are all now vice presidents and senior portfolio managers at Voyageur. Mr. Stodden was vice president and senior portfolio manager at Chicago Trust; Ms. Scinto was vice president, senior equity analyst and portfolio manager; and Mr. Cox was vice president, director of research and portfolio manager.
Voyageur, which has been primarily a fixed-income manager, with about $7 billion under management, more than half for U.S. institutional investors, will seed the new team with about $400 million, said Mr. Henderson. The team will manage institutional separate accounts in the same concentrated, conservative, low turnover style used at Chicago Trust.
The Minneapolis office of executive recruiters Warren Management assisted Voyageur in finding the team, said a Voyageur spokeswoman.
Voyageur's gain is Alleghany's loss in more than one sense. A few days after the team's Sept. 20 walk across town to their new Chicago quarters, Standard & Poor's removed the Chicago Growth & Income Fund from its Select list of 25 large-cap growth funds, citing manager turnover as the reason.
The Standard & Poor's Select program scrutinizes mutual funds on a range of criteria and recommends 25 of the best funds to financial advisers and other third-party intermediaries.
New York-based Standard & Poor's said the Growth & Income fund's stellar performance over time -- it has outperformed its peer group since 1995 -- was part of the reason it made it onto the recommended list.
The team of four oversaw about $1 billion at Chicago Trust in large-cap growth equities. About $600 million of that was in the Growth & Income Fund and in the equity portion of the Alleghany/ Chicago Balanced Fund the team also managed. The rest was managed in separate accounts for institutions and wealthy individuals.
Robert Boyles, chief operating officer of Alleghany Asset Management, said Bernard F. Myszkowski, has been named senior vice president and chief equity officer and will assume the portfolio management duties of all four departed managers. He had been an institutional and high-net-worth portfolio manager on the large-cap growth team.
Stuart Bilton, president of Alleghany Asset Management, said he was comfortable with the "deep bench" of 10 investment professionals left on the large-cap growth team and noted that as part of a firm with more than $43 billion under management, Chicago Trust "has a lot of resources to draw on."
Mr. Myszkowski may continue to manage that $1 billion in assets for some time, as Mr. Bilton said Alleghany "wants to see how it specs out over the next year or so. We can weather the storm, as a firm, as long as you keep the process clean and focused."
If necessary, more staff will be added later, he said. An equity analyst position that had been vacant prior to the departure of Mr. Henderson's team will be filled as soon as possible.
