Florida Opens Public DC Plan Bidding to Five Providers

November 14, 2001(PLANSPONSOR.com) - Florida state pension officials decided to increase the number of private investment companies that will have a shot at selling defined contribution plans to public employees, according to the Tallahassee Democrat.

The Board of Administration, Governor Jeb Bush, Treasurer Tom Gallagher and Comptroller Bob Milligan voted on including a handful of additional companies in the new $30 billion retirement system that will open to 650,000 public employees in mid 2002.

The bundled investment providers are:

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  • Prudential,
  • Nationwide,
  • ING Aetna,
  • Fidelity Investments, and
  • VALIC

According to the newspaper, the board’s staff recommended against allowing these companies into the program, saying they add cost and complexity without providing significant additional benefits to employees.

The trustees also approved negotiating with SAFECO for an open brokerage window for the plan.

Nicholas-Applegate Lays Off 49 Workers Including 18 Money Managers

October 2, 2002 (PLANSPONSOR.com) - Grappling with what it said were overlapping personnel responsibilities and the continuing effects of a "brutal" market, a San Diego, California investment firm is laying off 18 money managers and consolidating some of its trading teams.

Rick Shaughnessy, a spokesman for Nicholas-Applegate Capital Management, said the layoffs — which totaled 49 including non-trading employees — were part of a firmwide reorganization.

On the investment side of the company, Shaughnessy said officials felt many products overlapped and several of the trading teams duplicated responsibilities. For example, Shaughnessy said the company had maintained separate teams for international equity, emerging markets and Pacific Rim, but decided all three needed to be combined.

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He said Nicholas-Applegate had also been running teams for large- and mid-cap institutional and teams with the same focus only for managed account customers. Those groups have also been consolidated down to two, he said.

Most of the money manager layoffs are because of the trading team consolidations, Shaughnessy said.

Effective dates on layoffs from the now 328-member firm are staggered starting October 15 and going until April 30, 2003, Shaughnessy said.

Although part of the driver for the reorganization was a goal of improving corporate focus and efficiency, Shaughnessy said the stubborn bear markets that have claimed numerous casualties at investment houses across the country made the slimming down necessary.

“You can’t take away that context,” Shaughnessy told PLANSPONSOR.com. “The market has been brutal for 2 ½ years and that has definitely caused our assets and our revenues to decline. We set out to achieve an appropriate scale to our business given our asset and revenue base.”

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