Deals & People January 9, 2012

BNY Mellon Names Head of Manager Research & Investment Solutions

BNY Mellon Investment Management named Cynthia Steer as head of Manager Research & Investment Solutions.  
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In her new role, Steer will have responsibility for performance oversight, due diligence and analysis of investment performance across BNY Mellon Investment Management. She will also be the senior investment adviser to the executive management of BNY Mellon Investment Management. Steer will focus on measuring and analyzing the firm’s investment strategies and on its overall solutions effort. In addition, she will provide ongoing thought leadership on global investment strategy.

Steer is reporting to Curtis Arledge, chief executive officer of BNY Mellon Investment Management, and Mitchell Harris, president. She succeeds Phil Maisano, who retired earlier this year.

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Steer joins BNY Mellon from Russell Investments, where she was managing director for investment strategy and consulting. She was responsible for working with clients on investment policy decisions, development of liquidity strategies and asset allocation, including to emerging and frontier markets. Prior to joining Russell, she was chief research strategist at Rogerscasey and oversaw global investment management and capital markets research, emerging and frontier markets research and fixed income research. Her experience also includes managing the assets of major public and corporate pension plans, including those of several Fortune 500 companies, investments for high-net-worth individuals and families and public and private endowment funds.

Steer received her bachelor’s degree from Smith College and her MBA in finance from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.  Among other honors, she was named the 2010 distinguished investment professional of the year by Women Investment Professionals. She has also written and lectured widely on strategic investment matters.

 

Products January 9, 2012

SPARK Releases Templates for Fee Disclosure Data Layouts

The SPARK Institute released spreadsheet templates of its Data Layouts for Non-Registered Investment Product Disclosures to Retirement Plan Participants.
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“We received feedback from our membership and others in the retirement plan community that spreadsheet templates of the Data Layouts would make it easier for, and increase the likelihood that, non-registered investment product providers would adopt the standards,” said Larry Goldbrum, general counsel. 

The data layouts were published in September (see SPARK Releases Final Data Standards for Fee Disclosures).    

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The availability of the spreadsheet templates adds another level of standardization to this process and makes it easier for companies who do not want to program for transmitting ASCII files to adopt the standards,  Goldbrum said.    

The Data Layouts are designed for use by non-registered investment product providers (e.g., bank collective investment funds, non-registered “fund of funds,” separately managed accounts and annuities) and recordkeepers to share information that retirement plan administrators must disclose to participants under the Department of Labor’s participant disclosure regulations. There are two templates – one for variable rate of return investments, employer securities and annuities; and another for fixed rate of return investment products.    

The spreadsheet templates are substantively the same as the original narrative version of the layouts and are posted, along with instructions for their use, on The SPARK Institute website at http://www.sparkinstitute.org/comments-and-materials.php. They are available for anyone at no charge for use.

 

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