Tom Butch President and CEO; Senior Vice President, Ivy Funds Distributor; Waddell & Reed

Seven years ago, Waddell & Reed broke from its long-running strategy of selling its mutual funds exclusively through in-house advisors. Tom Butch shepherded the Overland Park, Kansas-based firm's foray into third-party distribution and under his watch, assets in the wholesale channel ballooned from about $1 billion in 2003 -- when Waddell relaunched its fund lineup under the Ivy Funds brand on the heels of its purchase of Mackenzie Investment Management -- to nearly $30 billion today. Around 43,000 unaffiliated brokers have sold the Ivy Funds.

Anchored by Ivy Asset Strategy and Global Natural Resources funds, Ivy has been one of the fastest growing mutual fund families for the last three years, according to FRC.

Earlier this year, Butch and Brad Ross, whom he hired in 2003 as national sales manager, bagged the Sales Success of the Year Award handed out by Fund Action and Fund Direction.

Butch also leads Waddell & Reed's retail broker-dealer, which traces its roots to 1937 and currently counts 2,500 financial advisors. Last year, Butch oversaw the launch of a full-service brokerage platform through Pershing.

The Pittsburgh native joined Waddell in November 1999 from Stein Roe & Farnham in Chicago, where he was president of the mutual fund division. Earlier, he worked at Mellon Financial for 13 years. 

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