Deals and People August 19, 2013

Deutsche Names Head of Emerging Market Equities

August 19, 2013 (PLANSPONSOR.com) – Sean Taylor has joined Deutsche Asset and Wealth Management (DeAWM) as head of Emerging Market Equities.
Reported by

Taylor will oversee DeAWM’s Emerging Markets Equity strategies, products and investment teams globally. He will report to Randy Brown and Asoka Woehrmann, co-chief investment officers of DeAWM, and will be based in London.

Jerry Miller, head of DeAWM Americas, said, “We continue to enhance our investment platform by adding expertise in asset classes that offer significant opportunities for our clients. Sean has a very strong track record as an emerging markets investor and I am delighted that our clients will now have access to his exceptional insight.”

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Taylor joins from Pioneer Investments, where he was head of Global Emerging Market Equity. From 2004 to 2011, he was investment director at GAM, responsible for managing global emerging and frontier markets funds. Before this, he spent seven years at Societe Generale Asset Management UK, where he headed the emerging market desk before becoming head of Global Equity.

From 1994 to 1997, Taylor was with Capel-Cure Myers as a fund manager for international equity. Before that, he worked for James Capel Investment Management (HSBC).

Compliance August 19, 2013

Investment Adviser Ordered to Restore Plan Losses

August 19, 2013 (PLANSPONSOR.com) – An investment adviser has been ordered to restore plan losses, incentive fees and penalties for several employee benefit plans.
Reported by

The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) obtained approval of four consent judgments by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in which Zenith Capital was ordered to pay $602,018 in restitution for plan losses and restoration of the improper incentive fees, plus lost opportunity costs and penalties payable to the department, and three individual defendants were ordered to restore $503,385 in plan losses, incentive fees and penalties.

In addition, the three individuals are permanently barred from serving or acting as discretionary fiduciaries, investment managers, or trustees or administrators to a plan covered by the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA). The consent orders require the defendants to meet certain disclosure and training requirements in order to serve as consultants or investment advisers to ERISA-covered plans.

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The defendants named in the case of Harris v. Zenith Capital LLC are Rick Lane Tasker, Martel Jed Cooper and Michael Gregory Smith, individually and as fiduciaries and service providers. Zenith Capital LLC, an investment advisory firm located in Santa Rosa, California, was also named as a defendant in the case.

According to the DOL’s Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA), the defendants were alleged to have breached their fiduciary duties and engaged in prohibited transactions when they placed 13 employee benefit plans into Global Money Management (GMM), a hedge fund that collapsed and went bankrupt.

The DOL claimed Zenith Capital and the individual defendants placed the plans in the high-risk hedge fund despite the fact that the plans were not qualified, accredited investors, and failed to conduct prudent due diligence on GMM or its suitability as an investment for the plans. They also failed to disclose GMM’s ownership interest in Zenith Capital and their receipt of incentive fees from GMM for the plans that it placed into GMM. The general partners of GMM were convicted of mail and wire fraud in connection with GMM.

The full text of the consent judgment and order (docket number: 3:08-cv-04854-EMC) can be found here.

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