Columbia Management [see profile] plans to hire in Boston and boost its advertising. The Boston Globe's Todd Wallack reports on those tidbits and more this morning, as Columbia president Michael Jones and other executives lay out the mutual fund firm's future, which includes both product consolidation (not surprising after a merger) and product creation (in the popular asset allocation and absolute return niches).

According to the Globe, Columbia plans to add 150 jobs over the next three years in Boston. (The asset manager already boasts 1,300 employees worldwide, including 500 in Boston.) The new positions may include portfolio managers, product specialists and support staff on the admin side. As for advertising, new parent Ameriprise has already changed Columbia's logo and shifted from red to maroon.

"Are you going to see us running tons of TV ads down the road? No," Ameriprise asset management chief Ted Truscott told the Globe, " but I think you are going to see more print and trade advertising and certainly more use of the Web as a way to get the word out."

Watch for Columbia to consolidate some mutual funds (given that Ameriprise already has funds from RiverSource [see profile] and Seligman [see profile] -- between the trio it has more than 200 funds) while creating new ones. 

Edited by: Neil Anderson, Managing Editor


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