Placemark Investments appoints a new president

Thomas Coyle

24 June 2008

Title points to executive's role in overlay manager's core non-operations. Overlay manager Placemark Investments has given COO Richard Dion the additional title of president. He continues as a direct report to Placemark's chairman and CEO Lee Chertavian.

"Rich's promotion to company president is well deserved," says Chertavian. "His leadership and guidance over the years have been a critical part of Placemark's success."

In addition to operations, program implementation, technology, Dion is in charge of Placemark's product development, client-relationship management and advisor sales -- so, in plain terms, the additional title is simply a better reflection of his role at Placemark than COO alone.

Dion joined Placemark in 2002 as its national sales manager, and was promoted to COO before that year was out. Prior to joining Placemark, he was CEO of Oberon Financial Technology, a feeased investment-platform provider (acquired by Chicago-based Envestnet Asset Management in 2005). He has also worked in a number of senior sales and product-development roles at Boston-based Fidelity.

Bigger piece of a growing pie

Overlay management is the process of aligning trading activity, managing cash flow and enhancing the overall tax efficiency of multiple-sleeve investment portfolios.

Dallas and Wellesley, Mass.-based Placemark manages more than $7.5 billion in assets as an active overlay manager for unified managed account (UMAs) and multiple-discipline account (MDA) programs. Its clients include Toronto-based BMO Nesbitt Burns, New York-based RBC Wealth Management (formerly RBC Dain Rauscher), Atlanta-based Homrich & Berg, and New York-based Oppenheimer Asset Management.

Overlay accounts like UMAs and MDAs are finding favor with some advisors because they provide fairly broad asset allocation and tax oversight with lower investment-minimum hurdles than similarly diversified portfolios of stand-alone separately managed accounts (SMAs). They also feature comprehensive reporting designed to help investors make better sense of their holdings and, in theory at least, make the advisor's job easier by streamlining the consulting process.

Overlay accounts could account for $500 billion in client assets by 2011, according to an estimate by Dover Financial Research, a Westwood, Mass.-based research firm. If that comes to pass they will have gone from about 11% of overall SMA assets to 35% in about five years.

Placemark's primary rival is Parametric, a subsidiary of asset manager Boston-based Eaton Vance. It has about $7 billion on its overlay platform.

The position of president is a new one at nine-year-old Placemark -- in a sense anyway. Firm co-founder and business-development head Randy Bullard held the title for a few years, but shed it in 2005 to reflect his concentration on bringing in new institutional clients. -FWR

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