David Hunt and his team are celebrating their parent's sesquicentennial.

David A. Hunt PGIM President, CEO

Last Tuesday, February 18, was the 150th birthday of Prudential Financial. A company spokesperson confirms that Hunt, CEO of Pru's PGIM [profile arm, was on hand with other team members for a celebratory opening bell ringing ceremony that morning at the NYSE.

"PGIM celebrated Prudential's 150th anniversary by hosting over 20 celebrations around the world, including offices in the U.S., Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Italy, Ireland, London, and Germany, among others," a PGIM spokesperson tells MFWire via email.

"Prudential's customers and shareholders have chosen a company that has endured challenging and unforeseen events over its 150 years of existence," states Charles Lowrey, Pru's chairman and CEO.

John Fairfield Dryden founded the Prudential Friendly Society in Newark, New Jersey on February 18, 1875. The publicly traded insurer has since grown to more than 40,000 employees. (The Pru team has put together a timeline of the company's history.

Pru's asset management roots go back 102 years, to 1923, when Pru offered its first group pension contract, a PGIM spokesperson confirms. The insurer launched capital solutions services in 1925 and entered the institutional fixed income asset management business in 1928.

Pru bought Jennison Associates (founded in 1969) in 1985, and Jennison integrated in Pru's asset management arm in 2000. All of Pru's asset management businesses consolidated under the new PGIM brand in 2016, and its Prudential Investments mutual fund arm transformed into PGIM Investments in 2017. (Separately, Pru exited the defined contribution retirement plan recordkeeping business in 2022.)

As of December 31, 2024, PGIM had $1.4 trillion in AUM. The asset manager now has more than 4,900 employees (more than 12 percent of Pru's aforementioned total) and 41 offices across 19 countries. In the U.S., as of February 5, PGIM Investments offered 49 ETFs and 74 mutual funds.

(Meanwhile, Hunt is preparing to pass the reins to the next PGIM CEO, Jacques Chappuis, on May 1; Hunt, PGIM's founding chief, is expected to retire on July 31.) 

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