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ProFunds Hires Chief Investment Officer
Asset manager ProFunds Group has plucked Todd Johnson from index and quantitative institutional money manager World Asset Management to be chief investment officer.
The CIO position has been somewhat of a revolving door at ProFunds and its ETF group ProShares. Johnson is the fourth official to hold the CIO title in the past three years. George Foster, who had been director of portfolios, assumed the CIO role in early 2008, and heads back to spearhead product development.
World Asset Management has a large footprint in fixed income, and Johnson could help ProFunds extend its lineup of bond ETFs. World Asset also manages more than $13 billion for institutions. As institutions increase their use of ETFs, ProFunds and ProShares could be looking to gain a greater share of that market.
Mazzilli Joins IndexIQ As Advisor
Paul Mazzilli, one of the first dedicated ETF analysts, who helped build Morgan Stanley’s team tracking the industry in the U.S., has landed at alternative investments shop IndexIQ.
The Rye Brook, N.Y.-based indexing developer appointed Mazzilli, whose departure from Morgan Stanley became public in November, as a senior advisor and member of the company’s advisory board.
Mazzilli, who joined Morgan Stanley in 1975, oversaw analysis of actively managed closed-end funds as well as passively managed index-linked exchange-traded products at the struggling financial services firm. He also guided the management of Morgan Stanley’s Strategic Equity Portfolios (STEP) products and asset allocation models using ETFs.
At the time of his stepping down from full-time duties at Morgan Stanley, Mazzilli was believed to be looking for part-time assignments as a board-level advisor to ETF-related firms he found interesting.
DeAngelo Exits WisdomTree
Ray DeAngelo, who served as director of ETF distribution at WisdomTree since July 2005, has left the independent ETF provider. His responsibilities have been assumed by Luciano Siracusano, who has been promoted from director of research to director of sales and chief investment strategist at the firm, in a move designed to streamline the business and better align the research and sales efforts.
DeAngelo joined the start-up ETF provider in the summer of 2005, before it had launched its first products. He previously spent three years as head of institutional sales at Barclays Global Investors’ iShares unit.
Jeremy Schwartz, formerly the deputy director of research at WisdomTree, has replaced Siracusano as director of research at the firm.
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