Investment Product and Service Launches

Art by Jackson Epstein

Northern Trust Launches Omnium Event Manager Platform

Northern Trust has launched Omnium Event Manager, a web-based workflow tool designed to provide asset managers and asset owners with a consolidated view of corporate action and dividend events affecting fund portfolios, enabling them to coordinate with brokers and custodians to respond to voluntary events.

Institutional investors with complex investment portfolios can face a high volume of corporate actions, ranging from dividends, stock splits, corporate restructures or acquisitions. Omnium Event Manager replaces the often manual workflow of monitoring and responding to corporate actions with a platform that includes tools for capturing event and position data, notifications and deadline publishing, and communications with counterparties.

“The asset servicing industry has struggled to achieve straight-through processing of corporate actions. Managers have traditionally had to manually monitor the effect of corporate actions on their portfolios,” says Dan Houlihan, head of asset servicing, Americas at Northern Trust. “By digitizing this process on Omnium, our middle- and back-office technology platform, we’re empowering asset managers to further automate their middle-office operations.”

The Event Manager platform leverages global Omnium services to promote real-time positions, referential data, event details, and workflow and Swift messaging integration. The Event Manager platform also includes capabilities such as interactive dashboard engagement and event forecasting; an automated alerts and notification suite; previewing and sending of instructions to counterparties; previewing and posting of entitlements; and automated counterparty mapping.

Alger Announces Second High-Conviction, Actively Management ETF

Fred Alger Management LLC (Alger) has launched its Alger 35 ETF (ATFV), a high-conviction, actively managed exchange-traded fund (ETF). It will invest in 35 “best ideas” sourced from the firm’s experienced analyst team.

Alger 35 ETF will be managed by Dan Chung, CEO and chief investment officer (CIO) of Alger. Chung, who has 27 years of investment experience, is also a portfolio manager on several of Alger’s long-only and long/short growth equity strategies. The ETF will execute a strategy similar to the Alger 35 Fund, a five-star Morningstar rated fund, which launched in 2018.

“We launched our first focused strategy in 2012 and have seen increased client demand and notable asset flows into the strategies since then. By offering an actively managed ETF, investors can access our investment capabilities combined with the liquidity and potential cost benefits of an ETF vehicle,” Chung says. “The number 35 has special and personal meaning to me, as I lost 35 of my colleagues on September 11 nearly 20 years ago. As a way of honoring them, we will donate 5% of the net management fee of ATFV to charities and causes that were important to these Alger employees who perished.”

Alger previously launched the Alger Mid Cap 40 ETF earlier this year, a focused portfolio of 40 high-conviction mid-cap growth equities managed by Amy Y. Zhang.

Alger has licensed ActiveShares from Precidian Investments LLC, which enables the firm to deliver actively managed investment strategies in an ETF vehicle without disclosing holdings daily. The ETFs will be listed on the NYSE Arca Inc., which currently lists nearly 80% of all U.S. ETF assets under management (AUM).