Deals & People July 14, 2009

Principal Affiliates Shuffle Management

Principal Global Investors announced Jill Cuniff will join Seattle-based Edge Asset Management as president.
Reported by

Most recently, Cuniff was president of Morley Financial Services in Portland, Oregon, where Timothy Stumpff has now been named president, according to a press release. Both Edge and Morley are affiliates of Principal Global Investors and member companies of the Principal Financial Group.

Cuniff and Stumpff will be responsible for their firm’s overall activities including investment management, sales, client service, marketing, finance, and operations. The changes will be effective September 1.

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Cuniff joined Morley in 1988 and has 20 years of experience as both a business leader and investment professional, the release said. Stumpff brings over 21 years of experience and has been with the Principal Financial Group since 2003. He is currently vice president of Network Development for the Principal Financial Group, and previously served as vice president, Capital Markets.

Edge Asset Management (formerly WM advisors) delivers actively managed asset allocation funds, equity, and fixed-income products. Morley Financial handles all aspects of stable value investing, including portfolio management, research, sales, and service.

Products July 14, 2009

STOXX, Source Team up for Supersector Indexes

STOXX Limited, provider of European equity indexes, has launched the Dow Jones STOXX 600 Optimised Supersector Indexes, a new series of European sector indexes.
Reported by

The indexes were developed in collaboration with Source, provider of exchange-traded products and founded earlier this year by Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley.

According to a press release, key factors addressed in the construction of the new equity indexes are: concentration, diversification, liquidity, and availability to borrow stocks in the index. Source has licensed 18 of the 19 sectors as index benchmarks for exchange-traded funds (ETFs), which will be launched in the coming weeks.

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STOXX said the indexes will be the first to take into account the ability to borrow a stock in the stock lending market, using data provided by Data Explorers, an independent provider of stock lending and short interest information.

“With the launch of the Dow Jones STOXX 600 Optimized Supersector Indexes we are taking an innovative approach to creating sector index products by focusing even more on improved liquidity and diversification,” said Ricardo Manrique, chief executive officer, STOXX Ltd., in the release. He said the greater degree of underlying liquidity is achieved by concepts such as applying a liquidity weighting factor to each component and incorporating a stock’s availability to be borrowed. In addition, a new component weighting cap scheme assures UCITS-III compliance, Manrique said.

The initial index universe for the Dow Jones STOXX 600 Optimized Supersector Indexes is the stocks in the Dow Jones STOXX 600 Index. Stocks from Iceland and Greece are removed, and the remaining stocks are ranked by two liquidity measures: average daily turnover value (ADTV) to market free float (%ADTV ratio) and availability to borrow. Up to 60 stocks with the lowest liquidity are removed from the index.

The remaining stocks are divided into the 19 Supersectors based on their industry classification benchmark (ICB): Automobiles & Parts, Banks, Basic Resources, Chemicals, Construction & Materials, Financial Services, Food & Beverage, Health Care, Industrial Goods & Services, Insurance, Media, Oil & Gas, Personal & Household Goods, Real Estate, Retail, Technology, Telecommunications, Travel & Leisure, and Utilities.

More information is available at www.stoxx.com.

 

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