“I hate to say it,” says the CEO-elect of Russell Investment Group, “but the bear market has been good to us. Pension funds are looking for new ways to run their portfolios.” Russell has added 33 U.S. clients and $10 billion in assets worldwide this year alone.
But to Ueland, who becomes CEO in January, that success is merely a warm-up. Since dumping the Frank Russell Co. name in September, he has rejiggered the management of the venerable Tacoma, Washington, pension consulting firm and money manager to clear the decks for expansion, naming a new CFO, CIO and group portfolio strategist.
His audacious aim is to grow Russell as fast in the next decade as his predecessor, Michael Phillips, did in the one past. In practical terms, that means the firm would be handling manager selection and asset allocation for nearly $850 billion in assets by 2014 -- a tenfold increase.
Ueland, who ran Russell’s Australian business before taking over its international operation in 1987, insists that this is no pipe dream. “Manager-of-managers is the most scalable business model in the asset management industry,” says the 44-year-old, who joined Russell in 1983 while a graduate student in economics at the University of Washington. “There is no reason why the winner in multimanager shouldn’t be the biggest asset manager on the planet. We aspire to be that winner.”
