Changes at discount brokerage Charles Schwab of San Francisco have left the company searching for someone to head its proprietary fund management unit.
On June 17, the company merged operations of its fund supermarket with its fund management group.
The restructuring follows the announcement in March by William Klipp, president and chief operating officer of Charles Schwab Investment Management, that he would retire by the end of the year.
Klipp began at Schwab in 1990 and created Schwab's own fund family in 1991, beginning with three funds. The SchwabFunds family now has 36 funds.
"We just wanted to try to give ourselves one mutual fund face," said Greg Gable, a Schwab spokesperson, in explanation of the reorganization.
Schwab is organized in clusters to serve customer groups and the combination of the funds supermarket and Schwab's fund management group will bring together all those employees who serve mutual fund investors, Gable said.
John McGonigle, previously head of Schwab's Third Party Funds division, which includes its fund supermarkets, has been chosen to lead the new umbrella mutual fund organization. McGonigle created Schwab's no-transaction fee fund Marketplace in 1992.
Schwab has approximately $240 billion in assets under management, including holdings in its own proprietary funds and third-party funds sold through its fund supermarkets. The Schwab Funds have a total of $93 billion under management, up 46 percent during the past year as of the end of the first quarter. The company also has plans to establish a proprietary offshore funds group based in Dublin, Ireland.
The company is still searching for a successor to Klipp.
