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Portfolio > Portfolio Construction

Fred Alger Management Regroups

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NU Online News Service, Sept. 20, 11:45 a.m. – American Skandia Investment Services Inc., Shelton, Conn., has appointed an investment firm to co-manage some of its portfolios after its long-standing investment management firm lost key people in the Sept. 11 World Trade Center terrorist attacks.

ASIS, which is the investment manager for American Skandia Trust and American Skandia Advisor Funds, says it has asked Massachusetts Financial Services Company to serve as interim co-portfolio manager for its AST and ASAF Alger All-Cap Growth portfolios.

The company made the move after Fred Alger Management suffered the apparent loss of David Alger, who is the founder’s younger brother, along with Selai Khoo and many of the firm’s research analysts and portfolio managers in the collapse of the WTC towers. A spokesman for American Skandia said of the Alger firm’s 55 employees that 38 are still unaccounted for.

The firm was on the 93rd floor of WTC Building 1, the first tower hit.

Fred Alger, who founded his investment management company in 1964, had been traveling in Europe at the time of the attack. He has now emerged from semiretirement to once again assume leadership of his decimated firm. “He is absolutely focused on rebuilding,” says Michael Murray, an American Skandia spokesman.

Fred Alger American Skandia Trust is one of the underlying mutual funds whose portfolios are offered as investment options for the company’s variable insurance products. American Skandia Advisor Funds is its multi-manager retail mutual fund family.

Fred Alger Management manages $16 billion in assets, including $835 million for American Skandia. David Alger and Khoo were the portfolio managers on the AST and ASAF All-Cap Growth portfolios.

“We continue to have great confidence in Fred Alger Management’s ability to rebuild, and we will work with them to formulate plans that are in the best interest of American Skandia’s investors,” said Wade Dokken, chief executive officer at American Skandia.

The MFS team currently responsible for American Skandia’s AST MFS Growth Portfolio, led by Stephen Pesek, will assume day-to-day management of the assets in conjunction with Fred Alger. Pesek is senior vice president of MFS Investment Management and a member of the large-cap growth portfolio management team.

MFS and American Skandia say they will contribute their management revenue from this contract to the families of the missing Alger employees. American Skandia will contribute an additional $25,000 to this fund.


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