A publicly traded bank outside Philadelphia is entering the mutual fund business. Separately, an institutional asset manager and mutual fund subadvisor focused on large growth is shutting down.

On Tuesday Frank Leto, president and CEO of Bryn Mawr Trust (BMT for short), confirmed that the Brywn Mawr, Pennsylvania-based bank's parent, Bryn Mawr Bank Corporation, is creating BMT Investment Advisers, which in turn is launching the BMT Multi-Cap Fund. The fund is the first in a new series trust, BMT Investment Funds.

The Philadelphia Business Journal and Reuters both picked up on the BMT fund launch.

U.S. Bank National Association is the new fund's custodian, U.S. Bancorp Fund Services is the transfer agent, and U.S. Bancorp's Quasar Distributors is the distributor. Tait, Weller & Baker is the independent accounting firm, and Stradley Ronon Stevens & Young providers legal counsel. Ernest Cecilia, senior vice president and chief investment officer at BMT, and Andrew Keefer, senior vice president and director of equity research, are the PMs of the new fund.

Launching the fund, Leto explains, lets the bank offer its "strategic investment expertise to the mass market."

"The Fund streamlines our investment process and will allow us to serve even more clients, expanding our opportunity to become a trusted advisor to more investors," Leto states.

Gary Madeira, executive vice president and head of BMT's wealth management division, describes the fund as being useful both for BMT's existing wealth management clients and as a way of broadening the bank's reach to investors with fewer assets.

"In addition to better serving clients across the Wealth Management Division, the BMT Multi-Cap Fund will provide clients who have investable assets that are less than our standard minimum with the opportunity to invest in our proprietary investment strategy in a fully diversified way," Madeira states.

Meanwhile, in Chicago, Holland Capital Management is winding down over the next 60 days, Gail MarksJarvis of the Chicago Tribune reports. The institutional asset management firm has about $2.5 billion in AUM, mostly in large cap growth stocks, and subadvises American Beacon's [profile] $95-million Lou Holland Growth Fund. (American Beacon adopted the fund five years ago.)

Monica Walker, now CEO and chief investment officer, co-founded the firm with Lou Holland in 1991, yet Holland retired in 2008 and died in 2016 after battling Alzheimer's. Rekha Misra, chief operating officer of Holland, tells the Tribune that the firm has notified clients about the wind-down and that Walker, co-PM Carl Bhathena, and two analysts will continue to handle investments for the 60-day wind-down period. That includes senior analyst Nick Zimmerman, who is working on the wind-down but recently resigned, along with fellow senior analyst Dan Romanoff, the paper reports.

According to Misra, "Walker ... is interested in working outside the investment business after the firm closes," the Tribune reports. 

Edited by: Neil Anderson, Managing Editor


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