Putnam Hires Sipple to Reach Out to Wealth Management Firms

The newly created position will report directly to William T. Connolly, head of Global Distribution for Putnam, the firm announced.

Sipple is the latest alumnus of Fidelity Investments to join the firm. He previously headed Fidelity’s Bank Trust business unit, focused on serving institutional bank clients.

Putnam said Sipple will a play a pivotal role in reaching out to wealth management partners by coordinating the resources in the firm’s product, investment, and relationship management areas. He will lead an investment-oriented team that will work directly with research teams at major wealth management firms.

“As wealth management firms increasingly embrace open architecture for clients and develop more transparent, proprietary research to support their advisers, we think it is important for Putnam to be able to supply these teams with a wide range of product information and insight on the firm,” Connolly said in a statement.

At Fidelity Investments, Sipple was previously responsible for the firm’s Investment Consulting Services, working with all distribution channels to provide proprietary investment and capital markets research to internal and external clients.

Prior to that, Sipple served as a managing director, head of Managed Accounts, Senior Portfolio Management & Analyst Relations for AllianceBernstein Investment Research & Management. Sipple also held senior positions at Portfolio Advisory Group, LLC, and Wedbush Morgan Securities earlier in his career.

Efforts  to Reach Advisers

The hiring of Sipple follows other recent hires to better focus on financial advisers. In October, Putnam announced two hires in its Global Distribution Team to reach out to registered investment advisers (RIAs) (see “Putnam To Focus More on RIAs”).

Putnam said it has been making strides to educate advisers about steps it is taking to improve its business under the leadership of Robert Reynolds (see “Fidelity Alum Reynolds to Lead Putnam Investments”). The firm said those steps include:

• a restructuring of Putnam’s equity investment division (see “Putnam Announces Equity Restructuring”);
• senior hiring in trading, portfolio management, and research, including Walter Donovan as chief investment officer,  David Glancy, Nick Thakore, and Robert Ewing (see “Donovan Jumps Ship for…Putnam,” “Putnam Names Glancy to Portfolio Manager Post,” and “Putnam Continues Effort to Build Up Investment Team”); and
  
• the launch of new products, such as a suite of target Absolute Return Funds (see “Putnam Integrates Absolute Return Strategies with Lifecycle Suite”).