Association pays tribute to professionals who helped shape the SMA business. The Money Management Institute (MMI), an association of separately managed account (SMA) managers and sponsors, has named Peter Amendolair, Mark Pennington, William Taylor, and William Turchyn as recipients of its Pioneer of Investment Consulting award, to confered at its annual conference in Boston next month.

Innovators

Amendolair, now a senior managing director at the Oppenheimer Consulting Group, was a founding board member of MMI when he worked at Merrill Lynch. Pennington, also a founding member, is a partner with Lord Abbett. Taylor, a former head of MFS' SMA business, supervises Wachovia-owned Evergreen Investments ' retail SMA efforts. Turchyn, a partner at Marine Investment Group, came up with the idea of MMI as an independent association and recruited several of its leading members.

"The focus of the awards this year is on those innovators who exemplify the definition of 'pioneer,'" says MMI president Christopher Davis. "Each of these accomplished veterans was instrumental in founding the Institute that for 11 years has served as an advocate and catalyst for growth for separately managed accounts and wealth management, the fastest growing segment of this country's financial services industry."

SMAs, broadly defined, hit the $1.5-trillion-in-assets mark at the end of September 2007, according to the MMI -- an increase of about $200 billion from the end of June 2007. -FWR

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