Asset Management, Consulting Firms Make Leadership Changes for 2024

Coming of a year-end equities rally and facing a year of macro challenges, high-level leadership changes are helping Wall Street ring in 2024. Both Voya Financial Inc. and the Goldman Sachs Group Inc. announced promotions on Wednesday in institutional investing, retirement wealth management.

Voya announced that Christine Hurtsellers, CEO of Voya Investment Management, will retire later in 2024, with Matt Toms, global CIO of Voya IM, succeeding her in the role, effective immediately.

Before retiring, Hurtsellers will serve as a strategic adviser to the company. Meanwhile, Toms has joined Voya Financial’s executive committee; both executives report to Voya CEO Heather Lavallee.

“After almost 20 years at Voya, and as I look ahead to retirement and the ability to attend to my family’s needs, I am grateful for and proud of all that the team has accomplished over the years,” Hurtsellers said in a statement. “In the meantime, I look forward to working closely with Matt and Heather—and to engaging with our clients, intermediaries and employees—to ensure a smooth transition.”

In his prior role, Toms oversaw 300 investment professionals managing approximately $310 billion in assets under management across fixed income, equities, multi-asset solutions and alternative strategies. He previously served as CIO of fixed income. Prior to joining Voya IM in 2009, Toms worked with Calamos Investments as a senior vice president and director of its fixed-income business.

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“Matt has been global CIO since 2022, has 30 years of asset management expertise, and has great insights into the needs of our clients,” CEO Lavallee said in a statement. “His deep knowledge and experience with our firm, and his passion for our clients, will serve him well as he leads Voya IM into its next stage of growth.”

Voya also announced that Eric Stein has left a position at Morgan Stanley to become Voya IM’s head of investments and CIO of fixed income.

Stein, who will report to Toms, will lead the public fixed-income investment team, as well as oversee the broader equities, income and growth and multi-asset strategies and solutions investment teams.

“I am excited to have Eric on the Voya IM leadership team,” Toms said in a statement. “His more than 20 years of investment experience and demonstrated expertise in leading sizable teams throughout his career will no doubt bring great value to our investment teams and our clients.”

Stein previously served as CIO of fixed income at Morgan Stanley Investment Management, managing 275 professionals and investment strategies for the division’s approximately $200 billion fixed-income platform.

Goldman Promotes Wilson to New Role

Goldman named Greg Wilson to a newly created position in the client solutions group as head of retirement for asset and wealth management, according to a company memo. Wilson will shift from his current role as head of workplace advisory solutions for Goldman Sachs Ayco, the firm’s workplace financial benefits division, but continuing to report to Larry Restieri, head of Goldman Sachs Ayco.

In the new position, Wilson will set strategy across the firm’s retirement distribution, defined contribution and workplace advisory divisions with the goal of “enhancing collaboration,” according to the memo from Marc Nachmann, Goldman’s global head of asset and wealth management.

“The firm has a long history of working with employers to help them deliver high quality financial wellbeing and retirement programs for their employees,” Nachmann wrote in the memo. “As we expand our focus on the growing DC and individual retirement account (IRA) market, we are seeing increasing demand from participants and the organizations that support them for personalized solutions, tailored strategies and engaging digital experiences.”

Nachmann noted that the firm’s multi-asset solutions group will continue to oversee managed account investment advice and DC advisory. The multi-asset group is co-headed by Tim Braude and Valentijn van Nieuwenhuijzen.

Wilson joined Goldman in 1995. Prior to his current role with Ayco, he had led Goldman’s Honest Dollar division, a low-cost retirement plan platform for individual savers, small businesses and independent contractors. Prior to that role, he led third-party wealth platform solutions by which he marketed the firm’s sub-advisory, hedge fund of funds, insurance solutions and DC investment-only products for the U.S. and Canada.

The firms make the moves as a number of financial analysts, including Goldman’s macro-economic team,are forecastinga more stable year in the markets after recent years of volatility stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic, inflation and rising interest rates.

Tags: Asset Management, Goldman Sachs, Institutional Investing, Retirement Industry People Moves, Voya

This story has been updated.

The hotter-than-expected December 2023 inflation report, released Thursday morning, disturbed investors, although many strategists doubted it would affect the expected interest rate reductions from the Federal Reserve long-term. The larger question is, there’s a wide gap between the level investors think rates will fall to and where Federal policymakers think rates will settle.

In short, investors predict the Fed will cut deeper than do the actual people who will do the cutting.

Futures market investors project the Fed will start cutting at its March meeting, lopping a quarter percentage point off the benchmark fed funds rate, currently in a band from 5.25% to 5.5%. Right now, according to the St. Louis Fed’s statistics, it is at 5.35%. By the end of 2024, investors believe the benchmark will sit at 3.75% to 4.0%.

Fed policymakers, however, anticipate the level to be higher at year’s end, expecting 4.6%, according to their “dot plots” predictions issued after their December meeting. Fed Chair Jerome Powell and other Fed officials have indicated that any rate decisions will occur later this year and will depend upon progress in reducing inflation.

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The December Consumer Price Index report showed an annual increase of 3.4%, up from 3.1% in the November 2023 CPI report. The new CPI print was slightly more than the forecast of 3.3%. Still, the December number is down considerably from the peak hit in June 2022 of 9.1%. Alexandra Wilson-Elizondo, deputy CIO of multi-asset solutions at Goldman Sachs Asset Management, commented Thursday morning that the December report is unlikely to alter the downward trend anticipated for rates.

Powell has expressed hesitancy about declaring victory over inflation, preferring to see if it re-ignites before committing to any cuts. At his December press conference, the chair said the Fed is happy with the inflation rate deceleration but noted that “we need to see more.” He has made clear that the central bank’s hiking campaign is over.

To Jan Szilagyi, CEO at market research firm Toggle AI, the Fed’s hesitancy is understandable—especially with the economy seeming to be doing well, as exemplified by current high employment.

“A lot of the decline that we have seen so far was food and energy-related. So it’s not really something that the Fed can impact directly,” Szilagyi said in a statement. Thus, “looking at the labor market, looking at inflation, you are seeing a reason to tread a little bit more cautiously.”

Tags: CPI, fed funds rate, Federal Reserve, futures market, Inflation, Jan Szilagyi, Jerome Powell