Eaton Vance Management Inc. in recent weeks has named two new municipal bond portfolio managers to help handle the Boston-based firm's growing assets.
On Monday, the firm announced that it had promoted Craig R. Brandon, who has been a municipal credit analyst at Eaton Vance since being hired in 1998, to be portfolio manager of seven municipal bond mutual funds.
The appointment follows the hiring of Kathleen Meany in recent weeks as a municipal bond portfolio manager for high net worth private client accounts. Meany comes to the firm from Deutsche Bank AG, where she had worked with many of those accounts through Scudder Private Investment Counsel, which was purchased by the Eaton Vance Corp. parent company in July along with about $2.5 billion in assets under management.
"Our assets have grown," said Thomas J. Fetter, a vice president and director of municipal investments at the firm. Municipal bonds under management have risen to $11.4 billion from $6.8 billion in August 2001, partly due to a series of closed-end fund launchings.
Brandon, a vice president who has covered such sectors as general obligations and tobacco settlement revenues as a credit analyst at the firm, will manage the firm's open-end Arizona, Minnesota, Maryland, Mississippi and New Jersey limited maturity funds, in addition to two of its two Florida funds. Brandon joined Eaton Vance in 1998. Prior to that, he at one time worked in the budget office for the state of New York.
The firm meanwhile shuffled some other portfolio management responsibilities within the department, partly due to portfolio manager Tom Metzold's leave for sabbatical.
William H. Ahern Jr. was made portfolio manager of the closed-end Eaton Vance Insured Municipal Bond Fund II. Ahern, a vice president who has been a municipal bond portfolio manager at the firm for over 11 years, was also named co-manager of the firm's open-end Arkansas, North Carolina, Oregon and Kansas funds. Ahern joined Eaton Vance in 1989.
Cynthia J. Clemson was meanwhile made a co-manager with Metzold on the firm's open-end High Yield Municipals and National Municipals funds. Metzold is scheduled to return Jan. 1, 2005.
