2005 League Tables - 2005 League Tables

Capital Group Companies, whose largest components are its American Funds and Capital Guardian Trust Co. units, took the top spot in DCN‘s annual ranking of defined contribution asset managers by accounts won from U.S. plans with 42 net, new mandates. Bond management giant PIMCO came in at a not-so-close second with 20, followed by T. Rowe Price with a dozen. Better known names such as Fidelity and Barclays Global Investors garnered seven each to earn eighth place. Last year, Barclays placed first in mandates gained and Fidelity was second and Capital Group did not even make the top 10. Lord, Abbett & Co. dropped from third to tie State Street Global Advisors and Dodge & Cox. All three gained four accounts, putting them out of the top ten, whereas last year Lord, Abbett and Dodge & Cox were ranked third and fifth, respectively. The bottom five were all firms that had been touched by the mutual fund scandals that broke in 2003. Janus, down by 23 accounts, took the biggest hit, followed by Putnam Investments (27), INVESCO (19) and Strong Capital Management (16). Janus, Putnam and INVESCO retained their places at the bottom, though last year Lazard Asset Management and John Hancock, both of which were down two mandates, were just ahead of them. Strong, meanwhile, fell from the top third of firms, after ranking number 26 last year it went to 107. MFS fell even further, from number eight to number 106.

Among the top five firms, the total number of accounts gained was 96. Among the five firms that lost the most, the total was 104. That could point to a near-saturated market in which one firm’s losses are another’s gain.

BISYS Tops Recordkeepers

Fidelity was pushed back to second place this year by BISYS Group, which tacked on $80 billion in recordkeeping assets. JPMorgan Retirement Plan Services shot all the way from number 19 to number three. Nationwide Retirement Solutions had the fourth spot, while the The Vanguard Group came in at number five. Some of the big accounts won were Delaware Investments, which outsourced its recordkeeping to BISYS, and the University of California Retirement System, which went to Fidelity, adding $8.4 billion to the firm’s recordkeeping assets.

Merrill Lynch lost $2.3 billion this past year when it was dropped by Sun Microsystems in November, putting it at the bottom of the rankings and boosting J.P. Morgan. Merrill was followed by PNC Advisors, MetLife and Union Bank of California. Some losses came as the result of firms exiting the business--Aon Consulting finished fifth from last, but the firm exited the recordkeeping business entirely last year.

Fidelity Boasts Best Bundling Gains

It’s another first-place year for Fidelity, which garnered $8.6 billion in bundled assets in 2004. JPMorgan Fleming Asset Management followed with $2 billion. Nationwide Retirement Solutions, MassMutual Retirement Services and The 401(k) Company followed. MassMutual picked up more accounts--52--than any of the others in the top five, pointing to a shift to smaller individual plans. The average account won for MassMutual was $26 million, compared with $1.2 billion for Fidelity. Seventh-place Vanguard Capital had the second-largest average, at $800 million, while Nationwide came in at $650 million. MassMutual gained little, moving up only one spot and displacing The 401(k) Company, which slipped one.

Some of the big shifts in ranking were Prudential Investments, which fell from third place last year to 21st. Diversified Investment Advisors fell to 17th place from second. Nationwide had one of the biggest jumps; the firm came in 32nd last year.

In the losses column, the leaders were Putnam, Hewitt Associates, The Bank of New York, American Express Retirement Services and AMVESCAP Retirement. Putnam’s losses of $1.2 billion are in part due to the mutual fund scandals, which came to light in 2003 and had ripple effects that lasted through 2004, as many sponsors dropped their accounts over the spring and summer. Among them were Hanford Site and Koch Industries, both of which dropped Putnam in July. BNY, which lost a $1 billion account from Pearson, Inc., had the largest average asset loss.