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Newsmakers

Voya Investment Management Names Matt Toms First Global CIO

Toms, formerly the firm’s fixed income CIO, will oversee $330 billion in assets under management.

By Michael Katz



Voya Investment Management has promoted Matt Toms to the newly created position of global chief investment officer to oversee the firm’s $330 billion in assets under management.  

Toms has been head of public fixed-income investments at Voya IM for over 13 years, and CIO of fixed income for more than six years. He will lead a team of more than 300 investment professionals, and will continue to report to Voya IM Chief Executive Officer Christine Hurtsellers.

“Now is the right time to shift to a global CIO model, and we are fortunate to have an experienced, successful and well-regarded leader in Matt to oversee our investment teams,” Hurtsellers said in a statement. “In his 28-year career in investment management, Matt has not only gained great experience and insights into various market cycles and trends, but – equally important – he has leveraged this knowledge to develop and manage investment strategies that have delivered strong outcomes for our clients.”

Prior to joining Voya IM, Toms was senior vice president of fixed income at Calamos Investments, where he established and grew its fixed income business. Before he was at Calamos, Toms spent seven years as a portfolio manager at Northern Trust, and before that he was with Lincoln Financial Group for just over six years.

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“I look forward to continuing to work with our investment teams as we leverage our expertise across fixed income, equities and alternatives to help our clients achieve their long-term investment goals,” Toms said.

The fixed-income investment team will continue to report to Toms, who will hold on to his current portfolio management responsibilities, while Chris Lyons will take on an expanded role as head of private fixed income and alternatives. Lyons most recently served as group head of private credit and will continue to report to Toms. The firm also said that Vincent Costa, CIO of equities, and Paul Zemsky, CIO of multi-asset solutions, will continue in their roles, and will both report to Toms.

Voya IM also announced additional changes to its investment teams. It said Jeff Bakalar, CIO of Voya IM’s leveraged credit group, will retire in April and will be succeeded by Mohamed Basma, who has been named head of leveraged credit. Basma most recently served as managing director, head of senior loans and global collateralized loan obligations. Additionally, Michael Pytosh, Costa’s co-CIO overseeing the firm’s equities platform, and portfolio manager Jeffrey Bianchi are both leaving the company at the end of 2022. As a result, Leigh Todd will become lead portfolio manager for the firm’s equities growth strategies effective Jan. 1.

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Home > News > Research > Public’s Cash Stash Will Cushion a Downturn? Maybe Not
Research

Public’s Cash Stash Will Cushion a Downturn? Maybe Not

Economist Shepherdson says Americans’ savings already has been whittled down.

By Larry Light


One calming thought amid today’s economic turmoil has been that any recession would be softened by the large trove of savings that the U.S. public has accrued since the pandemic began. But that cushion may be a lot less protective than many believe, according to a study by Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics.

Pandemic savings have “been run down further than previously thought,” Shepherdson noted. “Consumers’ financial cushion against tighter financial conditions is smaller” than before, he wrote.

Thanks to Washington stimulus and curbed spending in the early days of COVID-19, savings had run up to $2.6 trillion. New government data, however, show that this ready cash has shrunk, no doubt due to high consumer outlays that kicked in since. Almost a third of the trove has been spent.

Indeed, consumers have gone back to their previous ways of preferring spending to saving, and then some. This past decade, before the pandemic, the personal savings rate was around 6% of their disposable income. That shot up to almost 25% in early 2020 and stayed high until the middle of 2021. Lately, it is a mere 3.5%.

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Credit card delinquencies are still low, although they have ticked up recently. And Nancy Lazar, chief global economist at Piper Sandler, has observed that credit-card debt has risen 6% from pre-pandemic highs. Of course, credit card interest rates have shot up, meaning carrying costs are becoming more onerous, hitting 16.3% on average, from 14.5% a year ago.

 

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