Deals & People January 25, 2008

Smail Retires from Pyramis Post

Peter J. Smail, president of Fidelity Investments’ institutional investment management business, is retiring from his post, the financial services firm announced.
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A Fidelity news release said Smail would stay in his post at Pyramis Global Advisors through the end of the first quarter while a search for a permanent replacement is conducted.

Fidelity President Rodger A. Lawson said in the announcement that Smail would continue after that as a consultant to the company and a member of the Pyramis Global Advisors Trust Company Board of Directors.

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Smail, 55, joined Fidelity in 1987 as vice president of operations for Fidelity’s 401(k) business and was instrumental in its growth. He became president of that business nine years later, added HR outsourcing to his portfolio in 2000 as head of Fidelity Employer Services Company, and launched Pyramis Global Advisors as its president in 2005, the company said.

Products January 25, 2008

SSgA Announces Launch of Long-Short Strategy Mutual Fund

State Street Global Advisors (SSgA), the investment management arm of State Street Corporation, has launched the SSgA Core Edge Equity Fund, a long-short (130/30) mutual fund that seeks to achieve long-term capital appreciation over the course of an economic cycle.
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Edge strategies, State Street’s version of short-extension or 130/30 approaches, introduce a limited amount of short selling in order to take advantage of a negative viewpoint in the stock ranking process, while providing capital for additional long positions of the same magnitude to maintain 100% exposure to a benchmark, SSgA explained in a company announcement.

The SSgA Core Edge Equity Fund will invest its assets, including proceeds received from short sales of securities, primarily in large and medium-capitalization securities – the underlying valuation or business fundamentals of which indicates prospects for growth. The fund plans to short sell the securities of companies with apparent deteriorating business fundamentals and/or valuations.

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“The SSgA Core Edge Equity Fund offers mutual fund investors access to State Street’s unmatched experience as a disciplined manager of long-short equity strategies for institutional clients,” said James Ross, senior managing director at State Street Global Advisors, in the announcement. “By removing the long-only constraint from the stock selection process, the Core Edge Equity Fund is designed to provide an increase in expected returns with a risk level that is moderately higher than that of the S&P 500 Index.’

More information can be obtained at www.ssga.com.

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