Briefly:

(November 18, 2008) Great-West Lifeco’s Putnam Investments plans to cut 47 jobs, or nearly 2% of its workforce, as part of a broad restructuring of its equity investment unit and consolidating fund offerings.

With these changes, 12 portfolio managers will be leaving the Boston-based asset management firm and 35 staff positions have been eliminated, including reductions to quantitative research.

Putnam’s chief executive officer, Robert Reynolds, says these changes would have been made even if the market was doing well.

The changes, he says, “reflect a drive to simplify our offerings and foster leaner, more rapid decision-making to deliver better results. They enable us to manage our equity unit more efficiently and redirect resources to growth.”

ICAC conference discusses global economy

(November 18, 2008) The Investment Counsel Association of Canada has announced the speaker lineup for its 57th annual meeting and conference to talk about the global crisis and how institutional investors should prepare for the future.

“At this time of unprecedented market volatility, we’ve decided to use our 57th annual meeting and conference to focus our members — who collectively manage more than $700 billion in assets — on economic, regulatory and political trends that have the potential to reshape the way value is created for Canadians,” says Katie Walmsley, ICAC’s president. “To do this, we have prepared an outstanding lineup of economists, consultants and market observers to address Canada’s investment counsellors.”

The lineup includes TD chief economist Don Drummond, Scotiabank chief economist Warren Jestin, Jonathan Tetrault from McKinsey & Company and Jim Ware from Focus Consulting Group.

There will also be a “presidential panel” featuring William Ashby, president of Beutel Goodman, Rob Badun, president of AGF Asset Management, and Rob Vanderhooft, president and CIO of Greystone Managed Investments.

(11/18/08)

Staff

The staff of Advisor.ca have been covering news for financial advisors since 1998.