Boston AMEX Office Kicks off Portfolio Management

Responsibilities for AXP Mutual Fund and AXP Growth Fund go to Robert Ewing and Nick Thakore, respectively.

Doug Chase, Ewing and Thakore joined American Express from Fidelity Investments in February to establish an American Express Boston office (see Fidelity Trio Lured to Amex ).

VP Managed, VP Capital Resources and VP Growth, which are variable annuity portfolios, will also be managed by Ewing, Chase and Thakore, respectively. All together, portfolios with assets of about $12 billion have been turned over to the Boston office.

In a separate announcement, American Express said it had launched a new fund to be managed by Chase, the AXP Large Cap Equity Fund. AXP Large Cap Equity will invest in the large cap blend/core category, concentrating the majority of its assets in companies with more than $5 billion in market capitalization.

The fund is benchmarked against the Russell 1000 and will focus on identifying stocks that are attractively priced with stable and persistent growth rates.

In a move some saw as retaliation for the talent raid of the three managers, Fidelity switched vendors in mid-March for travel and entertainment and corporate credit cards away from American Express.