Just a few days after New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer dropped his bombshell on the mutual fund industry, alleging that some investment companies had let hedge funds engage in late trading and market timing of fund shares at the expense of small investors, Matt Fink, president of the Investment Company Institute, announced that he would be stepping down. Some in the industry questioned whether Fink, 62, a 32-year veteran of the trade group, was ducking a public relations crisis. Others wondered whether the ICI board was looking to make room for a statesmanlike figure to navigate the industry through the storm.
Not so, says Fink. He tells Institutional Investor that he announced his retirement back in May at a special meeting of the ICI’s compensation committee, during the group’s annual member confab. But the ICI is in no rush to find a successor: Fink has said he will stay on through the end of 2004. He wryly notes, “No one can say I can’t stand the heat, because I’m not getting out of the kitchen just yet.”
