Investment manager also bolsters support for wealth-management "solutions". Eaton Vance has re-vamped its approach to sales by taking the emphasis off product silos and concentrating on distribution channels. The investment-management firm is also moving to bolster sales of its wealth-management products by offering in-house support to advisors with high-net-worth clients.

Channels

"We have developed a new management structure to support continued growth by strengthening our distribution relationships and facilitating a more coordinated approach to product marketing," says Matt Witkos, president of Eaton Vance Distributors.

This restructuring comes six months after Witkos, previously head of distribution at Natixis Global Associates, joined Eaton Vance, replacing Wharton "Whit" Whitaker, died in February 2007. It also coincides with a change of guard at the very top of the Boston-based asset manager including the departure of CEO James Hawkes, who will be replaced by Thomas Faust, now CIO. Also slated for departure is Lawrence Sinsimer, head of separately managed account (SMA) distribution and a direct report to Witkos.

Under Eaton Vance's new distribution structure, William Gillen is responsible for sales and fulfillment in the independent broker-dealer, bank and RIA channels, and Jerome Vainisi is head of sales and account functions in the wirehouse channel. Both had been managers of Eaton Vance's brokerage-sales team: Gillen as national sales director; Vainisi as of sales for the asset manager's eastern U.S. region.

Upscale

Eaton Vance will also amalgamate its SMA and alternative-investment marketing units as a new "Wealth Management Solutions Group" under James Durocher -- formerly head of SMA marketing and a report to Sinsimer. The new group will be a strategic resource to advisors looking to ways to help clients with things like concentrated stock exposure management, portfolio tax and risk management, lifetime income, and charitable gift funding.

"The Wealth Management Solutions Group has been commissioned to help advisors serve the specialized needs of clients," says Faust. "In combination with our field sales representatives, this group provides a formidable marketing and service capability to support the sophisticated wealth management offerings of the Eaton Vance organization."

By "field sales representatives," Faust means the wholesalers under Gillen and Vainisi.

Witkos says the wealth-management group was created, in part at least, to get word out that Eaton Vance's private-client capabilities go beyond retail SMAs to include overlay management for models-based portfolios and -- as a distinctly ultra offering -- derivatives structuring for clients with highly concentrated stock positions.

In support of its outreach to independent advisors, Eaton Vance is looking to for a chief marketing officer, adds Witkos. One of this executive's first functions will be to oversee the re-design of the company's website to make it more informative and easier for advisors to use.

Eaton Vance's subsidiaries Eaton Vance Management, Atlanta Capital Management, Eagle Global Advisors, Fox Asset Management and Parametric managed $158.1 billion on 30 September 2007. -FWR

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