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.
