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NewsmakersSeptember 16, 2024

Shelly Heier, President of Verus, to Depart This Month

Her duties will be taken up by the investment consultant’s CEO and CFO.

By Matt Toledo

Kraig McCoy

Jeff MacLean

Shelly Heier

Investment consultant and outsourced CIO provider Verus announced Monday that President Shelly Heier will step down from her position, effective September 30, after 24 years at the firm. Heier will be joining another, unidentified investment firm in a global leadership role, according to a news release.

Heier’s responsibilities will be divided between Jeff MacLean, CEO of Verus, and Kraig McCoy, the firm’s chief financial officer and chief operating officer.

“While I’ve decided to leave Verus to further my professional growth and I’m excited for this new challenge, I’m also sad to leave a place I’ve called my professional home for 24 years and all of the great people at Verus,” Heier said in a statement. “I firmly believe that Verus is in a very strong position right now and am confident firm leaders will pick up my initiatives seamlessly and do a great job moving them forward.”

Heier has spent most of her career at Verus, starting off as a research analyst before becoming president of the firm in 2013. Previously, she was a financial analyst at J. Duncan and Associates. She holds a B.A. in finance and economics from the University of Puget Sound.

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“Shelly has accumulated broad experience across the investment landscape and in business management. She has used these skills to inspire, guide, and motivate both her co-workers and her clients. While we are disappointed to see her leave, we also are proud to know that the professional she has become while working at Verus has prepared her to become a global leader in financial services,” MacLean said in a statement.

McCoy will adopt the title of president and CFO of Verus. “I believe that working with [MacLean], Shelly and other members of the Verus leadership team during the last eleven years, has prepared me to ably handle the added duties. I look forward to continuing the firm’s outstanding growth and the important initiatives the firm has underway in areas critical to our profession,” McCoy said in a statement.

McCoy was previously a controller at BGI and was also a controller at alternative investment manager Silver Creek Capital Management. He holds a B.A. in accounting from the University of Washington.

Why Soaring AI Stocks May Falter

Skepticism about long-term performance rises as the payoff of artificial intelligence now seems far off.

By Larry Light

Artificial intelligence may not be the economic booster rocket that optimists fancy it to be, according to an analysis by BCA Research. The “bubble in anything AI-related is the greater risk, irrespective of whether it catalyzes, or coincides with, a U.S. or global recession,” wrote Dhaval Joshi, the firm’s chief strategist.

While AI stocks have had an enormous runup, skeptics are starting to wonder how long the streak can last. Reason: The payoff seems distant. In another commentary, BCA wrote that “the euphoria on how quickly the AI gold rush will yield its gold, and to whom, risks being popped.”

AI has been very beneficial to investors in recent years, adding an estimated $16 trillion in value to the S&P 500 since late 2022, per BCA (the index’s current value if $45.8 trillion). The largest exchange-traded fund tracking AI, the Global X Artificial Intelligence & Tech ETF, has advanced 17% annually over the past five years, beating the S&P 500 (15%), and is up 13% this year, although it now is trailing the S&P 500 (18%) in 2024.

Nvidia, which specializes in producing chips for AI, has soared 92% yearly over the five-year period, and still is roaring, with a 140% rise this year.

The economic bounty that AI could create has been the subject of widespread optimism. JPMorganChase CEO Jamie Dimon contended in his annual investor letter that AI will be as economically transformative as electricity or the steam engine. Michael Arone, chief investment strategist at State Street Global Advisors, made a similar argument in a commentary, writing that AI’s “impact on productivity could add trillions of dollars in value to the global economy.”

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One complication for AI stocks is that, for a long time, many investors borrowed cheaply in Japan to buy them, but lately, the appeal of the “yen carry trade” has dipped, softening demand, as the Japanese central bank has started to hike interest rates.

By BCA’s reckoning, the popularity of AI stocks is independent from whatever happens to the global economy. A collapse of AI equities, its analysis declared, is “the bigger risk over the next 12 years.”