Deals & People January 22, 2009

Wilt&Team Set a New Course

One of the nation’s leading retirement plan adviser teams has broken its long-standing wirehouse ties, and embraced an independent affiliation.
Reported by

After two decades with Merrill Lynch, industry veteran Steve Wilt and three of his partners from the Star Group have linked up with Raleigh, North Carolina-based CAPTRUST Financial Advisers, where Wilt will lead CAPTRUST’s Midwest operations out of Akron, Ohio.

Wilt’s team – which includes Susan Clausen, Paul Stibich and Will Lyle – was PLANSPONSOR’s 2007 Retirement Plan Adviser Team of the Year.

Never miss a story — sign up for PLANADVISER newsletters to keep up on the latest retirement plan adviser news.

“This was a very big decision for me, as I have spent my entire career building my client base and many important friendships and relationships while at Merrill Lynch,’ said Steve Wilt. “But the industry has changed dramatically over the last few years and it became clear to me that our clients would be better served working with an independent firm, like CAPTRUST, that held a specialized focus on providing retirement advice.’

“As a specialty retirement advisory firm, our success has always been tied to our ability to attract the best and brightest retirement advisors,’ added J. Fielding Miller, co-founder and CEO of CAPTRUST Financial Advisors. “It goes without saying that we are thrilled to add such a highly-regarded team to our experienced group of advisers. CAPTRUST got better today.’

CAPTRUST Financial Advisors is an independent investment research and retirement advisory firm specializing in providing strategic advisory services to retirement plan fiduciaries, executives, and high net-worth individuals. Headquartered in Raleigh, North Carolina, the firm represents $22 billion in client assets with offices in Atlanta; Birmingham, Alabama; Boston; Charlotte, North Carolina; Jackson, Mississippi; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Portland, Maine; Richmond, Virginia; Washington, D.C.; and now Akron, Ohio.

More information is available at www.captrustadvisors.com.

The Markets January 22, 2009

Target-Maturity Funds Dealt Severe Q4 Setback

The fourth quarter of 2008 was a dark time for target-maturity funds as the average offering suffered a 17.3% setback, an Ibbotson analysis found.
Reported by

The Ibbotson Target Maturity report said the showing was “far worse” than the funds’ previous three quarters.

But the target-maturity funds were far from alone in their disastrous performance—Ibbotson pointed out that the rest of the markets were cratering too. The target-maturity average fourth-quarter showing actually beat out the S&P 500 Index, which Ibbotson said turned in a 21.9% fourth-quarter loss.

For more stories like this, sign up for the PLANADVISERdash daily newsletter.

On a year-end basis, the average target-maturity fund lost 30.8%, outclassing the S&P 500 by 6.2%. Not surprisingly, Ibbotson said the primary differentiating factor among funds’ showing was their stock-bond split, with those with greater equity holding underperforming the class as a whole.

Other funds were hurt by the “terrible performance of a few underlying bond managers,” Ibbotson researchers said.

“For the vast majority of target-maturity funds, their asset class exposures are the primary determinant of their total returns,” Ibbotson said. “But, occasionally, underlying investment managers can also have a significant impact.’

Without mentioning it by name, the Ibbotson researchers cited the OppenheimerFunds, Inc.,1 fund family “that allocated assets to a “core’ or “aggregate’ bond manager that blew up.’

“The potential for a material impact on the fund’s overall performance is greatest when the allocation to a manager is large,’ the report said. “Typically, the largest single-manager allocations occur within the U.S. bond and non-U.S. developed equity asset classes. So the implosion of a few major bond managers can have an outsized impact on target-maturity performance.’

The researchers asserted the problem is also compounded because few target-maturity families offer open architecture platforms, which means the funds are limited to in-house managers.

Ibbotson said it now tracks 264 unique target-maturity funds with at least a one-year track record (up from 253 last quarter), representing 39 fund families.

1. A previous version incorrectly identified Russell instead of OppenheimerFunds.

«